The company recently denied rumors that it has shelved plans for its next big APU, Kaveri.
In addition to speculation that the company is up for sale, AMD is also being hit by product cancellation rumors. The most recent rumor targeted its mainstream desktop APU line, which claimed that the current Piledriver will be AMD's last major core. The Steamroller core, which has been rumored to come with some innovative features such as native acceleration for web apps running in browser windows, would be canceled due to the effects of the layoffs at the company, resulting in AMD nixing the Kaveri APU, as well as the Excavator chip.
AMD denied this report and stated that the core as well as Kaveri are still in development. So far, this claim makes sense to us, since AMD is still a CPU company and its competitiveness will rely on product innovation in one way or the other. In a recent conference call, CEO Rory Read conceded that the company will scale back its traditional CPU business and put greater focus on micro servers, "semi-custom" APUs for the gaming, industrial and communications market, as well as APUs for tablets.
That said, microprocessor innovation is still the life blood of the company and it would be tough for the company to try to live off Piledriver until it has gained substantial traction in the tablet market.
