For the last six months, AMD's market share has been on the wane as arch-rival Intel regained much of the lead it lost to the smaller chip maker during 2006. But new figures show AMD's slide may have come to a halt.

According to market watcher iSuppli, AMD's Q2 2007 share of the global x86 processor market rose by half a percentage point from the previous quarter to 11.4 per cent. Intel's share dropped by an identical amount to 80.3 per cent over the same timeframe.

Not that Intel CEO Paul Otellini's going to lose much sleep over a half a percentage point dip when his company' lead is so huge. Equally, iSuppli admitted its numbers were preliminary - so it could well revise them shortly in Intel's favour.

Still, the final figures could well give a further boost to AMD, for whom even small gains are to be welcomed if it's to get back to the 16.8 per cent market share it held in Q3 2006. Its past gains haven't only come at Intel's expense, but also by taking share from all the other, smaller x86 processor vendors out there, the main one being VIA. iSuppli put VIA and others' share on 8.3 per cent, the same as Q1 but down almost two per cent on Q2 2006's 10.2 per cent.