In an interview with Businessweek, AMD CEO Dirk Meyer talked about Nvidia's x86 plans, the future of Globalfoundries and AMD's emphasis on mobile products.

Meyer is not surprised by Nvidia's push for an x86 chip of its own. He says it just confirms AMD's strategy of integration, which was behind its acquisition of ATI Technologies. Although Meyer thinks it's a good idea, he is not optimistic about Nvidia's prospects.

"I'm a little suspicious of Nvidia's ability to create an x86 chip from scratch. The intellectual property barriers alone are enormous. It's not something you switch on like a light switch," says Meyer. "And by the way, you have to pay for it."

Meyer says the company is in talks to get new customers on board for its Globalfoundries spin-off. He sees TSMC as the only other serious competitor in the foundry market, and believes customers seeking for alternatives will have no choice but to go with Globalfoundries. The fact that many companies are going fabless opens up even more market opportunities for Globalfoundries.

According to Meyer, AMD has opened a development track aimed at low-cost, power-efficient machines, "kind of in the spirit of netbooks." Once again Meyer says the netbook name will go away over time, and this is not the first time we're hearing such comments from AMD. AMD believes the line seperating netbooks and notebooks will blur and in the end people will see them as plain computers.

"One of the saddest things about the PC industry right now is, since late last year, all anyone seems to want to ask about is netbooks. Good grief! It's a low-cost limited-function device. There's not much excitement or money in dollar volume there," says Meyer, and we're guessing he's not a big fan of the netbook concept.

In January AMD launched its Neo platform, for thin and cheap notebooks, half way between netbooks and notebooks. However, it has found few takers, and so far the only announced design win is HP's DV2 12-inch notebook.

You can find the full interview here.