Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[KeithDust2000]

Tenchu, What gee-whiz features is AMD offering that OEMs want, but Intel supposedly won't allow them to?

Dual-core in 2P volume servers now, without any increase in power (rather a decrease compared with Xeon, even with DC), superior 64bit performance, just to stick with one example (there are additional advantages, but this is enough for the argument).

How come it's not worth it to the OEMs to drop the Intel rebates and go with AMD?

Let´s take Dell. 100% of their servers are INTEL-based. I´ll choose hypothetical numbers to get the point across. Let´s say Dell sells 1M Xeons per quarter. They get a certain rebate per processor (or there is a similar scheme with the same effect). Now they want to adopt Opteron. Let´s say they adopt the configuration described above. They´d get good pricing from
AMD for what would, in the first quarter, be maybe a few 10K parts (or whatever you deem reasonable). However, adopting Opteron would drop the rebates on the additional 1M processors from INTEL, making it factually impossible for Dell to make the move, as the lost rebates would far exceed the potential upside from selling Opteron, even with heavy discounts on Opteron.

I don´t think this is so hard to understand - especially if the company in question has 90% of the market.