Stefan Mileschin

Fabless chipmaker AMD is apparently working on a project to port Android onto x86-based PCs.

The move is being done without the help of Google, which is reportedly working with Intel to do the same thing. Intel has admitted that it wants to see Android running on its Atom platform.

According to Eweek, AMD's project is being done through the Open Sauce community and the open-source project Android-x86, led by developer Chih-Wei Huang.

It is fairly close to releasing the port of Android to AMD's x86-based Brazos platform and the source code is now available.

Huang's idea is to port the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android to x86. It would allow PC users to run Android on their systems instead of Windows. While it might not do any damage to Vole now, it might give Windows Metro plans a bit of a kicking in the fork later next year.

Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 OS will be designed to run not only on PCs, but also on tablets that run on either the x86 platform or system-on-a-chip (SoC) architectures, particularly ARM's.

It could see PCs set up with Metro for most work and only calling up a PC desktop if required. If Android is ported to x86 there would be no need to buy Windows 8 with its Metro interface. Of course you would have no PC related software for the beast but that might be seen as another problem.

While AMD is interested in such a scenerio, Intel said it has little interest in bringing Android to the PC space, and does not want to fuel the fragmentation of the Android OS.

According to EE Times, Alec Gefrides, manager of Intel's Google Programme Office, said that Intel and Google are focusing on running Android on x86-based smartphones and tablets, not PCs. He said Chipzilla's focus is to get phones and tablets on its Atom product line up and running on Android.

http://news.techeye.net/software/amd...android-on-x86