There is no official word yet, but a growing pile of evidence indicate that Nintendo has contracted AMD to develop and produce the Accelerated Processing Units (APU) for the upcoming Nintendo NX console.
AMD classifies its game console APU's as "semi-custom" chips. Those APU's combine both the CPU (Central Processing Unit) and GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) in one chipset. AMD's APUs are already being used in Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Wii U.
Back in December, AMD chief financial officer Devinder Kumar announced that the company had two semi-custom chip designs in the works. Kumar revealed that one of the two chipsets is ARM-based while the other ix x86-based. He then claimed that "at least one will be beyond gaming," which is interesting because Nintendo's recently deceased president Satoru Iwata described the NX as a "brand new concept" which is not meant to replace Wii U or 3DS.
Earlier this week, AMD chief executive Lisa Su announced that they have won a third semi-custom chip design which could generate a billion dollars in sales over its market lifetime.
Console APU sales have been an important lifeline for AMD whose been losing PC CPU market share to Intel over the last few years.
