Slashdot Mirror
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."
http://www.reactos.org/
Somebody company will eventually try it.
I wonder if Satan is wearing a hat with earflaps?
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?
$ man woman *
-bash:
Of course Intel is coming back with some impressive new technology so the battle ahead looks good for us!
Dell blah blah blah AMD blah server blah.
I really think the reason they're finally using AMD chips is that AMD will finally have the manufacturing capacity to supply Dell. Fab36 is delivering revenue now, and will ramp more as the year goes by. Between Fab36 and their relationship with Chartered Semi, they can supply Dell with the chips they need. And since its most likely they'll be 4S (8 core) servers, for ever server dell sells, they'll need 4 chips from AMD.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
They are initiating outsourcing of some production to Chartred.
I assume they planned in advance for this, since if the Dell deal didn't go through, they could cancel the Cartred deal without having tons of spare capacity on thier hands.
With 20/20 hindsight, looking at AMD's Chartred plans, it should have been pretty obvious that AMD had a big customer lined up. Too bad I didn't have that foresight, otherwise I could have made some good cash on AMD stock.
Satan needs his parka! Apple goes to Intel Dell goes AMD Next thing you know Vista will ship. Someone else mentioned Intel trying to strongarm Dell over this. I highly doubt it since Intel is currently in court over this kind of practice right now.
Is he strong? Listen bud, He's got radioactive blood.
Buy some earplugs and mount the server under your desk. Kills 2 birds with one stone... or 2 stones...
Karnal
When we compared the power draw for opterons versus itaniums at the time when such a battle was being contested, the results were pretty bleak for Intel and anyone associated with them. We setup a subsidary company to build custom servers for our project and we saved pry 20,000 dollars in electricity costs over the life of the project. 3 years and 2000 servers. Why is Intel so stupid when it comes to power consumption for server processors? The air conditioning is what gets you when you have 2000 200-300 watt proccessors that is a helluva lot of energy to cool.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
AMD Issues Statement on Dell Decision to Offer Customers a
2006-05-18 16:36 (New York)
Choice
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 18, 2006
AMD (NYSE:AMD) released the following statement today
regarding the announcement Dell Inc. made in its quarterly earnings
statement that it intends to offer AMD Opteron(TM) Dual Core
processor-based servers.
"We welcome Dell, and Dell customers, to the world of AMD64," said
Marty Seyer, AMD senior vice president, Commercial Business. "Dell is
a customer-focused company and we're pleased to see that they are
listening to their customers and providing them the choice of
innovative AMD products. We look forward to working closely with Dell
and bringing the benefits of AMD's leading performance-per-watt
solutions to Dell's customers.
Probably because they are only going to try to sell a very few AMD servers, and all for PR. I'd lay money that it's from a backroom deal with Intel.
Last year Dell started selling AMD CPUs. Boxed CPUs. Dell didn't make *ANY* computers those CPU's would fit in, but they offered the CPUs for sale. Why? It's incredably stupid to sell one upgrade component, that will only fit in your competitors machines, but not in your own, isn't it? So why? The only reason I can think of, is so that when Intel goes into court, and AMD tells the judge that Intel is using monopoly leverage on Dell so that Dell only uses Intel CPUs, Intel can say, 'well, Dell actually sells AMD CPU's as well'.
I can't imagine any other reason for doing that. But a judge will probably see through that quickly, so now we get a new announcement from Dell that they will build *some* AMD based servers. How many? Not many. Only at least 4-way servers. Why only 4-way servers when we the customers have been clamering for AMD for years? Because they can say they use AMD as well, without really touching Intel's market share. This one is all to make Intel look like less of a monopoly to the courts folks. Don't get your hopes up for AMD based Dell medium/small servers or desktops. It ain't gonna happen.
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?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.