Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[HellraiserDK]

Had Kevin Rollins, Dell’s CEO and president, said that Dell was looking at AMD blah blah blah it would have been the usual drivel. Just pressuring Intel’s prices down. But he didn’t.

Kevin Rollins said (twice, not once by mistake - twice) that Dell are closer to AMD than they have ever been and that some of AMD’s chips are actually superior to Intel’s chips – especially the Opteron and Athlon 64 FX. Add to that the fact that Broadcom is focusing on chipsets for AMD Opteron and that Sanmina has joined the AMD Validated Server program. Hint: Dell is a huge customer at Broadcom and Sanmina.

AMD mentioned at their Analyst Day that 30 new server designs would be out in Q1 2005. A few of them will be from Dell. They are designed by Sanmina and they will run on Broadcom chipsets. The deal is printed out and already signed.


"Is Dell finally going to team up with AMD?

Matt Loney
ZDNet UK
November 15, 2004

Dell chief executive Kevin Rollins on Monday gave the most direct indication yet that a deal with AMD may be on the way, dropping a strong hint that the news was a question of when, not if.

Speaking in Paris at the launch of Dell's first blade server, Rollins took time out to comment on press reports last week that saw AMD's stock rise on news that Dell has been studying the possibility of using AMD chips.

Rollins confirmed that the company has been investigating and testing AMD processors very seriously, and said, "We will let you know when we have a comment to make."

"Recently we have had a much more favourable disposition," said Rollins, "because some of [AMD's] products in high performance computing are very good and in some cases more advanced than those of Intel. We have looked more closely and more seriously than ever before."

Any agreement would be likely to see AMD's 64-bit Opteron chips appear in Dell servers. Intel's 64-bit server processor range starts with a Xeon, Intel EM64T, a substantially more expensive platform.

The prospect of Dell using AMD's processors is one of the industry's favourite rumours. Dell is famously the only major computer manufacturer that does not use AMD processors: HP, IBM and Sun all use them in addition to Intel processors. Both AMD and Dell are headquartered in Houston, and AMD makes no secret of the fact that its executives regularly go knocking on Dell's door."

http://hardware.silicon.com/servers/0,39024647,39125924,00.htm


"has been investigating and testing AMD processors very seriously"

"We will let you know when we have a comment to make"

"because some of [AMD's] products in high performance computing are very good and in some cases more advanced than those of Intel"


The AMD/Dell deal is already done. All we can now is wait for the official PR.


- HellraiserDK