BRUSSELS, July 1 (Reuters) - Semiconductor designer Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) (AMD.O) has secured unconditional EU antitrust approval for its $35 billion bid for Xilinx Inc (XLNX.O). AMD announced the deal in October last year, intensifying its battle with chief rival Intel Corp (INTC.O) in the data center chip market. The European Commission said it had not found any issues after a preliminary review. "The proposed transaction would raise no competition concerns in the European Economic Area given the absence of horizontal overlaps and vertical relationships between the activities of the companies," the EU competition enforcer said. It said the merged company would not have the incentive to foreclose rival providers of central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) and the presence of alternative suppliers. Reporting by Foo Yun Chee;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.