A sign of ongoing weak supplies of Intel's Atom - or a signal to the chip giant that it needs to pull its fabrication finger out. Whatever, Acer has hinted it may look elsewhere for its next netbook processor.

According to OEM sources cited by DigiTimes, Acer might go for an AMD CPU, or it might turn to VIA for the the machine's chip.

Acer's Aspire One: Atom based... but will its stablemates be?

The netbook is question is a low-cost model that's said to be due to join the Aspire One early next year.

As it stands, Acer wants to put all the Atoms it can get its hands on into new Ones. Rather than limit the supply of its first Small, Cheap Computer, Acer would apparently rather use a different CPU for its second one.

Last month, Intel promised its Atom supply restrictions would be over by the end of the year.

“We did not meet [Atom] demand in Q3... even though we were up substantially from the second quarter," confessed CEO Paul Otellini. "We are up again substantially in the fourth quarter... Our expectation is that we will meet demand by the end of the year but not the early part of the quarter."

Will that prove sufficient for Acer?

Acer Aspire One review

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