On Thursday, Dell released its second-quarter earnings that showed the company"s profits fell 18 percent from a year ago, and sales grew six percent, a moderate rate compared with previous quarters.
Dell also announced in its second-quarter earnings press release that the company will offer AMD Opteron processors in multiprocessor servers by the end of this year.
Speculation has mounted for years as to whether the company would adopt the chips, despite Dell"s exclusive relationship with Intel to this point. AMD has enjoyed a performance lead in server benchmarks over Intel"s Xeon processors.
At this time, Intel is stillthe sole supplier of processors for Dell"s desktop and mobile computers, excluding those manufactured by its recently acquired Alienware division.