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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."
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.
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
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.
Congratulations, you are the first to invoke Godwin's Law in a discussion about server CPUs.