We've been used to AMD mounting short-lived insurgencies against Intel. You know the drill: AMD creates a processor that's cheaper and faster every two or three years, briefly bursting to around 20% market share, but Intel quickly rallies its forces to squash the threat.

But over the past two years, something's changed. AMD has burst to the 20% mark, and managed to stay there. Sure competitive product has helped, but the main difference is that AMD now has some big friends. The key breakthrough came last year when Dell, looking for every possible angle in its assault against HP, abandoned its former Intel-only policy in favour of placing AMD's chips inside first some servers then, horrors, mainstream PCs.

Today comes word that our little battler has scored another win. Toshiba has announced it will build around 20% of its PCs around AMD processors. That's great news for anybody who likes lower prices, more choice, a little serious competition to keep prodding Intel forward.