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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.
Microsoft is supporting the AMD 64 extensions. Dell probably wants to be on the MS rather than Intel side of things since there is no (real) alternative to Windows.
Anyway, this is server-side only. CEO Rollins says, "If we basically sucked up all of AMD's [manufacturing] capacity it would not be enough. They don't have enough capacity for us to use them on the desktop. For us, fundamentally, AMD is much more interesting in the server, workstation or gaming arenas."
The AMD 64 chips also seem to run cooler. This would be majorly helpful, one thinks, then the high clockspeed Intels in a server farm situation. And the 64 bit allows more RAM to be addressed. Yep. Server.
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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.
AMD ofice has a grave in the front lawn saying Intel Inside . Looks like finally its gonna come true
You probably liked the "Dude, you're going to Hell" advertisements, too.
Not that I'm fond of them as a company or anything, but my employer buys thousands of HP's servers, and HP has been selling Opteron-based servers (e.g.) for some while now. Even if AMD never achieved sufficient penetration with ia32, there's some hope that they'll gain some of the ephermeral credibility by being first to market with a workable ia32-compatible 64-bit architecture.
It's not. AMD's market cap is 7.72B, Intel's is 51.97B. That's the main number that "matters" (although the stock price itself matters for some obscure psychological reasons)
But don't feel bad, you still bet on the right pony.
Nice job modding up for someone saying the exact same thing as the post.
I have a love-hate relationship with Dell.
They sell both really solid machines (400SC?) and utter shitpiece machines (600SC). Sometimes you get a good deal and sometimes the stupid thing just crashes when you put 2 or more PCI cards in it.
Their only saving grace is that once you figure out the right machine for your needs, they usually keep selling them for a while so you can buy another one when you need it.
Dell obviously has a clue when it comes to efficient just-in-time manufacturing, but they're way out of touch with how end users and businesses use PCs. Their web site is a joke. It's surprising how hard it is for them, with all the resources at their disposal, to get it right.
When will a PC mfr get it right?
From this article:
,unless AMD bought the famed gravestone and has decided to sport it at their offices now (and I found no evidence to suggest this) the parent might be mistaken.
The former Cyrix site in Richardson, Texas... we visited the site and met ebullient Jerry Rogers, the ex-CEO, who... proudly showed us round the property, which sported a mock gravestone marked "Intel Inside RIP" in the reception area....
So
Also from the article: Cyrix, of course, was acquired by Via... who, it seems, faced some challenges netween their engineering and their business sectors after the acquisition. But, then again, when have these sorts of differences ever been news?
Of blankness, I know nothing.
I'd hope this would bolster their ability to supply the larger OEMs.
Their website sucks, true, but they aren't alone in this. I can't think of a single business website that has a decent interface, they all universally suck.
It's like it's a fucking game with the web developers: How hard can I make it to hide the most useful shit from the end user. It's always some thing new. If I want a phone number, say, for Fed Ex, for example, I spend a good couple minutes dicking around on their site before calling information.
Anyway, Dell is my new favorite computer company. They sell the best machines and have the best support I've dealt with recently ( old Compaq customer here ). When something does break, they have a replacement part on my door step the next day, or if it's critical, the same day. And I don't pay a fucking dime for that service, it's included.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I remember seeing a speech by Andy Grove about Intel's business model. Basically that intel puts huge investment and thus huge risk into each new processor version and that failure was not an option as it would destroy the companies ability to continue innovating.
Well, here we are today with this story about Dell, and then there's the story about Microsoft not supporting Itanium, and then theres the news that Intel stopped development on the 4ghz processors (essentially admitting failure of their technology model). The real nail in the coffin is that AMDs processors are not only cheaper, but they are faster and run cooler.
In the bigger picture, this is the next step in the commodization of computers. This process is making them cheap as toilet paper, but it is also a harbinger of end of rapid innovation and perhaps even the end of moores law. This should be expected as its the natural progression of any product.
Once Intel in marginalized, Microsoft must be soon to follow?
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.
If it is critical? You mean if you buy 4 hour service. I work at Dell, we can't send stuff same day just because it is important, you have to have the right kind of contract. That said, I think our support is pretty damn good (at least on the business side). I can't say that every single tech there is top notch, but they give me a good deal of control over how to resolve an issue and send out parts without needing to get approvals etc. I honestly don't see how we make money given the low ass margins on the systems.
I doubt you meant what that actually means.
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
This is fine, assuming you are running windows on the machine in question.
Rather than wait for Dell to make up their mind about AMD chips, we are switching to Opteron-powered Sunfire servers.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
to ramp up production like that out of fear of Dell pullin' a Walmart. i.e.
1. go to a smallish company.
2. buy enough product to double or triple production.
3. Watch the company go into massive debt as they struggle to keep up.
4. Threaten to stop buying before all that debt's taken care of and leverage that into a great deal.
5. As the saying goes, Profit!
Walmart destroyed quite a few companies before people wised up, and there's probably still a few small fry that'll get burned.
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Despite what most have posted, Intel is going to win out of this.
Dell queries AMD and AMD replies, while Dell secretly hopes that Intel is going to jump on this and lower their prices for CPU's, so that Dell can sell the PC's at the same price, but get more profit out of them.
So Dell should be the winner, right?
Well, no...
Since Intel sees what Dell is up to, it plays the game and acts like it's totally ignorant. It gives new features and lower prices for the CPU's, but therefore it's going to need Intel chipsets and motherboards...
You can see what this is going to cause?
Chipset and Intel motherboard prices will rise and I'm not sure Intel is going to lower their CPU prices that much either.
It's simply enough for them to advertise "Now, Intel CPU's got better, faster and cheaper".
But when the whole media campaign is over, Intel has revenue from it's motherboard and chipsets, while raising the CPU price again.
Who is losing now???
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All the "market cap" is this: stocks x price.
So its pretty much how much money you would need to buy the company/what the company is worth.
Intel is a MUCH bigger company than AMD. They have more plants, people, sales, etc. So all that capital is simply worth more.
More info here.
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!"
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Good looking (imho)
Light weight (for the times when you are not on broadband, support sites for instance is merely text)
Easilly navigated (you can often guess the url path, like www.apple.com/ipod, /hardware /store etc)
It sell's Apple computers! (hihi)
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Unless AMD issue new stock (or sells its own stock, which is essentially the same thing), buying it would only transfer funds to the stock owners, NOT to AMD.
- AMD doesn't have the manufacturing capacity to supply Dell with enough processors for the desktop.
This *kinda* goes hand-in-hand with my earlier rejected story I tried to submit:theinquirer.net 1st reported that AMD in a bold move " has signed a deal with Chartered Semiconductor - a Singapore foundry - to make 64-bit processors under licence". Then contituned to elaborate on the story, that " AMD move to Chartered is insurance policy ", where they take help from Nathan Brookwood (senior chip analyst at Insight64.com) totry to make sense of the move.
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
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s /A ppleStore.woa/71202/wo/Tp1uBcC8gWZv2lQEPAXn8ZQZXjG /0.0.11.1.0.6.21.1.1.1.1.0.0.1.0
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It DOES take a genius to guess this is a page for buying PowerBooks.