Dell to Use AMD Chips in its Servers

garfangle writes "Dell has decided to include AMD's Opteron processor in its product line of servers. This is the first time Dell has used AMD chips within its own Dell branded products (excluding the recently acquired Alienware computers)." From the News.com article: "The deal appears to be confined to servers at this point. The news came along with the release of Dell's earnings results, which were in line with the disappointing warning the company provided last week. Revenue was $14.2 billion, up 6 percent from last year, but net income slid 18 percent to $762 million. Several times during the last few years, Dell CEO Kevin Rollins has hinted that the company was right around the corner from introducing products based on AMD's chips."

Comments

It's about time..

[HTMLSpinnr]

Dell's finally seen the light. Given Dell's (past) market share in the server market, this is definately a big win for AMD. Let's hope it's not too late in the game, though.

One has to wonder, however, will there be any financial reprocussions from Intel after the announcement of this deal? If so, would it only push Dell further into AMD's lap?

Re:The apocolypse is nigh...

[tjw]

And since its most likely they'll be 4S (8 core) servers, for ever server dell sells, they'll need 4 chips from AMD.

No doubt this is the reason for the switch. AMD is offering what is basically an 8-way SMP on boards and cpus that don't fall out of line with commodity parts. Hell, Supermicro even has a 4-cpu (8 core) opteron board designed for 1U. Intel's solutions for anything more that 2-way smp still require special, uber-expensive Xeon MP cpus last time I checked and good luck cramming one into 2U or 1U.

What this means for AMD

[Prien715]

Back in '99, AMD chips were found on laptops and whatnot, but they never really took off. They marketed their chips as a "value-priced" alternative to Intel (bullet train commercials mentioned "As fast as intel but cheaper"). Fast forward to today, where AMD abandoned their value brand (Duron, which they recently replaced with Sempron) and invented a new brand for their flagship chip (Opteron). AMD has gone from trying to compete in the Kia/Hyundai marketplace to competing in the Toyota/Lexus one -- rather than price being their selling point, they're focusing on quality (which, to be fair, they've had for quite a while. Again, this is just marketing.)

People bemoan the lack of AMD in the server/laptop Dell space but consider what this looks like to anyone buying from Dell: "You can either buy these cheap but 'good enough' Intel servers, or you can upgrade and buy this premium AMD box". In the end, people prefer switching to a "higher quality" brand rather than a "price aware" brand: isn't it hard to defend taking anyone to McDonald's when there's a much better but slightly more expensive restaurant next door?