Slashdot Mirror
Dell May Try AMD Chips For Some Servers
LarsWestergren writes "According to InfoWorld, Dell may be close to adopting AMD processors. Don't get your hopes up too early though. It is mainly for servers (and possibly "gaming"?) since AMD doesn't have the manufacturing capacity to supply Dell with enough processors for the desktop. Furthermore, Dell have said similar things before, possibly to put pressure on Intel and get better deals from them. Still, this is definitely a PR win for AMD." Intel, though, has a lot more ad dollars to contribute.
They can either switch to AMD and get better processors, or threaten to switch and negotiate a better deal with Intel -- either way, Dell wins and Intel loses.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Unforuntately, Dell is in bed too long with Intel for them to add AMD to their productline. Not to mention, the corporations still count server performance by numbers marketing numbers like GHZ and AMD's processor power ratings maybe too low to be advertised correctly.
Uhhh, why on earth would I care one way or the either? Why would my hopes be raised?
1. A lot of people at Slashdot like AMD. They might also
a) Work at a company that demands Dell computers
b) Like the price and/or support that Dell gives
If Dell goes AMD they can ge the processor they want from the vendor they need.
2. Despite being recognized as doing superior processors (at the moment at least), AMD lags behind in sales to Intel and doesn't have as much cash reserve and "goodwill" reserve from the public. If AMD screws up and releases a dud in the future, that single mistake might be enough to wipe them out, and we are back to having essentially a monopoly. I don't know about you, but I like the fact that the competition is putting some fire under Intels bloated asses. Remember when they were comfortably releasing new processor with speed increases by 33 Mhz per 6 months for premium prices, even though they had the technology to go much faster? They could do that because then their only competition were themselves.
3. AMD has put a wedge into the previously rock-hard Wintel alliance, an alliance that in my opinion led to stagnation and lack of innovation. They growled at each other sometimes, but both knew that without the other they were dead and therefore supported the most braindead ideas of the other company. Now Microsoft can choose AMD (as they recently did when they announced they wouldn't support Itanium2 in future Windows), and AMD and Intel can choose to support Linux or BSD. If you have 4 entities you get much more unpredicable alliances and companies have to keep more on their toes to stay competitive. Who knows, the superior combination of AMD+Linux (or Intel+Linux!) might even sell better.
For instance, Microsoft were saying "No one wants or needs 64 bit on the desktop, and there is no Intel processor that does 64 bit so it would be nuts for us to do a 64 bit OS.", and Intel said "No one can afford or needs 64 bit on the desktop, besides their is no MS OS that does 64 bit it would be nuts for us to do 64 bit processor."
But then AMD releaed Athlon 64, and Linux came out with 64 bit support before Windows. It is a great combination but so far it is mostly people in the know who get that combination.
That is why I care, because if Dell start selling them, they get a bigger cash buffer and greater acceptance is the public mind.
Actually I am a Network Engineer for a large multi-hospital system. I can tell you with over 1000 servers in our farm... MHZ is NOT the issue for servers.. 1. Is it reliable? 2. Does it have support for failover/hotswap 3. Does it run the software. 4. Does it meat budget requirements for the system and project? Those are the questions asked - if you knew anything about the real server marked you would understand that servers are typically several generations behind the latest and greatest. We still have servers in production that are P2 400 Mhz machines (dual processor) that run major medical systems that support over 400 users - these systems require 24/7 uptime and typically run at 99.96 % uptime (this is with windows NT 4.0) Don't even ask about the unix systems... IBM hardware that is ancient that supports over 1000 users - talking about 66mhz procs and such. MHZ is definatly not what we look at.
No, AMD becomes the next Intel, geeks move onto Transmeta as AMD's prices rise. Eventually, Transmeta (or some other corp.) triumphs when AMD dies. Windows stays.
Really, if Windows is to die then either it is going be the slow nibbling we may be seeing now from Linux JDS et al or when a new architecture comes out that is faster *and* cheaper than x86 and we switch to it's OS. The death of one particular x86 vendor matters not to Microsoft. I still wouldn't rule Intel out. Or matter accurately: I'd rule them out except they still have one line left and it actually fairly succesful: Pentium M. Watch Intel sell the rest of the farm and any grandmother it can find to pump money into this project's R&D to make it a real killer.Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
Dell is well known for it's strategy. It's such a big fish that none of it's suppliers can afford to lose them, including Intel.
So Dell snugs up with 'the competition', making sure the news leaks that they are 'real serious' about switching suppliers.
Then they go back to their current supplier, telling them about their 'intentions'. Unless of course they get a better deal. Which they then get.
Dell isn't going to take AMD.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
...we ALWAYS support the underdog. As soon as the underdog becomes successful, we start bashing them.
e.g. we supported nVidia right up until 3dfx went out of business. Now ATI is the favourite.
It's my opinion that supporting the underdog is an effective litmus test for leftist tendancies.
(For the record, I voted Kerry and am making an observation)
Dell have a problem in the HPC/multi-processor server market. The latest generation of Xeons, the EM64T 64bit capable x86 class processors can only currently go 2 way as Intel don't actually produce a 4 way chipset for these processors yet. Not only this but because the EM64T processors share a memory bus they soon run out of bandwidth.
This is a real problem for Dell as they can't produce machines with large, flat memory architectures with more than 2 processors, and even then the HPC (High Performance Computing) crowd are just laughing that their machines because of the price and memory bottleneck.
Dell are now seeing large cluster purchases abandoning them for other companies who can supply fat nodes which 16-32GB of RAM and 4 processors which have copious amounts of memory bandwidth 'cos of the cunning way AMD built the Opterons.
This is why, I believe, Dell are looking at adding AMD to their line. It may also be a cynical move to get Intel to do something but in the cluster space Intel's processors produce too much heat and just can't do 4 way+big memory and Dell are hurting.
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
I highly doubt that Dell will start using any AMD chips for a while yet. Why? Because Dell is by far the largest Intel customer, and they get (and deserve) the best pricing for Intel chips. Plus, they receive large subsidies for advertising Intel only product lines.
Selling any AMD chips would threaten their pricing arrangements with Intel. Since Dell sells billions of dollars of CPUs per quarter, even a half a percent rise in Intel chip prices amounts to 10's of millions of dollars in CPU costs per year. Nevermind product development costs, inventory, and training costs.
Dell has to sell many thousands of ADDITIONAL units just to break even on adding AMD to it's roster.
That said, it's too late for me to try and run the math... maybe the numbers do make sense.
Absolutely untrue, AMD would only see the cash if you were buying stock directly from them at the IPO. All transactions subject to that are subject to the Greater Fool Theorem and only put cash in the pocket of the seller. Besides, you probably already have your shares and this is an attempt to pump the market with slashdotting to get a better price. Are you from Utah by any chance?
Am I the only one who cringes everytime he hears the word "Intel" in an ad, because you just know that their stupid jingle will follow? After years of being subjected to dah-dah-DAH-dah in just about every single ad for a laptop or a computer on TV, this is reason enough to buy AMD.
Dear Intel ad people, there is such a thing as overdoing things. Why don't you quit the "repeats are everything" theory and switch to the "let's be cool and funny" version? Works for Apple anytime.
Until then, I'm saving for my dual Opteron system. You can take your dah-dah-DAH-dah and...