At the Qualcomm Technology Summit, AMD made a surprise appearance to shed some light on their partnership in Qualcomm. The objective: to integrate Qualcomm's LTE modems in AMD-powered mobile platforms, offering always connected capabilities to laptops and convertibles. AMD's Kevin Lensing took to the stage to talk about how AMD's reference designs for the Ryzen Mobile platform (which includes deployment of the company's Ryzen 5 2500U and Ryzen 7 2700U APUs, for instance) shipped to OEMs with an integrated Qualcomm LTE modem - a clear nod at another design point OEMs could look towards integration on their products. These should allow for online connectivity on the go, offering users more ways to keep connected, whether for work or play.

Of course, this is hardly the first time mobile PC form-factors have had this kind of modem integration; Intel has done it for quite some time on their products, with the XMM7260 and XMM7360 that it has applied to more business-oriented devices or Chromebooks. However, adding LTE enablement as an option for AMD-based platforms at this scale is actually a first for AMD. Naturally, the integration of yet another piece of silicon to a mobile device will undoubtedly add to cost and battery consumption, besides adding some more question that end-users have to answer: which carrier option are available, which of those to go with... But having more options is usually better than the alternative, is it not?