Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday denied a news-story published earlier this week, which claimed that the world’s second largest x86 chip designer had abandoned development of the code-named Bobcat microprocessor aimed at low-power applications.

“Bobcat remains under development as an important future core for AMD,” said Damon Muzny, a spokesperson for Advanced Micro Devices.

Bobcat is an AMD microprocessor designed for very low power computers, such as netbooks or mobile Internet devices (MIDs) or even consumer electronics (CE). It is widely believed that Bobcat will be a rival for Intel Atom processor, even though AMD has never officially released many details regarding the product.

Earlier this week a web-site published a short notice claiming that Bobcat project had been abandoned and that AMD refocused resources on its “core” products.

Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro Devices recently said that it plans to concentrate on development of its core products – central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) – and to get rid of non-core assets, such as chips for digital TVs or processors for handsets. However, being a low-power x86 chip, the Bobcat can be considered as an important project of AMD that fits into core businesses.

While the Bobcat is not officially cancelled, the chip does not seem be around the corner. Originally AMD promised that the CPU will be available in 2008, but the year is about to end and there are still no signs of Bobcat’s arrival.

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