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The word of the day for Advanced Micro Devices is "ambidextrous."

AMD on Monday announced it is going all-in with the ARM architecture, unveiling a multi-year product roadmap that dips equally into the x86 and ARM instruction sets for future client, server, and embedded processors.

It was the strongest statement yet from the chip maker that ARM will be as important to its product development going forward as x86, the instruction set which AMD and its larger rival Intel have made the dominant force in PC and server chips over the past couple of decades.

"Today is about innovation," said AMD president and CEO Rory Read at a press conference in San Francisco. "Today, we're going to talk about that next step as we embark upon our ambidextrous roadmap to develop a 'skybridge' technology that connects our IP on a single SoC."

Read's use of the term "skybridge" was a hint of just how far AMD plans to go towards integrating the ARM architecture into its historically x86-based microprocessor lineup. The chip maker's roadmap revealed the next big thing for AMD—Project Skybridge, which is nothing less than the creation of pin-compatible processors using either the x86 or ARM architecture that can drop into one-socket-fits-all platforms for PCs and embedded systems.

Project Skybridge accelerated processing units (APUs) for clients and embedded systems will be based on AMD's Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) and start appearing in 2015, said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of AMD's Global Business Units.

The x86-based Skybridge APUs will feature AMD's next-generation Puma+ central processor cores, while the ARM-based chips will utilize low-power, 64-bit ARM Cortex-A57 cores and will be AMD's "first HSA Android platform," Su said.

The future Skybridge parts, both the x86 and ARM versions, will coincide with AMD's move to the 20-nanometer process and will incorporate the company's new Graphics Core Next architecture on System-on-a-Chip (SoC) designs.

AMD billed Skybridge as a unique offering that it alone is capable of pulling off. Su's rationale for the desirability of investing pretty much equally in both x86 and ARM going forward is that AMD believes those two instruction sets "will be the dominant architectures going forward to meet perpetual demand for more compute to propel new capabilities and experiences."

Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst for Moor Insights & Strategy, didn't quibble with that outlook.

"AMD has a real unique offering here," Moorhead said. "They're the only one doing x86 and ARM and doing it with a single socket for each platform. That saves money and provides flexibility for the ODMs and OEMs."

AMD has been out in front with its development of ARM 64-bit server chips over the past couple of years and earlier this year announced that it has begun sampling its first products in that effort, code named Seattle.

More recently, the company hinted at the beginning of an even more integrated x86-ARM strategy with last week's announcement of next-generation APUs for laptops, tablets, and 2-in-1s coming out later this year. Code named Beema and Mullins, these mobile processors will feature AMD's standard x86-based central processing cores but also include a special, ARM-based core that handles mobile security functions on the same System-on-a-Chip (SoC) die.

What comes after Skybridge is an even deeper investment by AMD in ARM. The chip maker announced its licensing of ARM's 64-bit instruction set all the way back in late 2012, but so far has only used the off-the-shelf version of the architecture for products like Seattle, Beema, Mullins, and the future Skybridge parts.

But on Monday, AMD said it has entered a new licensing agreement with ARM and will be designing its own customized 64-bit ARM cores dubbed "K12," the first of which will begin shipping in 2016.