AMD licensed the ARM architecture last year and not much was said about it. Move to today and you'll find a massive new use of the ARM technology. AMD is planning on building server chips (Opteron) using a 64-bit ARM architecture. Though there are no product announcements today, some see this as an important first step for the company.

Interestingly, AMD has a processor license, not an instruction set one, so AMD will be integrating an ARM-designed core into their Opterons, rather than designing their own. This has both its advantages and disadvantages. For one, AMD doesn't have to spend R&D costs designing a new ARM core, however, they aren't spending R&D costs to design a core that could function better in the server market.

ARM-based Opterons would be great in the microserver market. However, that is currently a small market, though its a market that Intel doesn't currently compete in. If AMD is successful with this, they could end up having some very exclusive access to the market, at least until Intel throws lots of money at building a chip.