Intel Corp (INTC)

[Sarmad]

>> if one of the majors wanted to do a 4 socket server they would want fully functional parts for 6 months or so to do system level validation

gb, I think that's optimistic in favor of AMD. in mid-May '06 Dell said they'll sell Opteron 4-socket servers. I think they became available in November. So that's 6 months. However, the chips had been "fully functional" for two years before that. So they must have been working on them for much longer. Besides, customer validation takes months also.