SOURCES SAID that Intel has bought a number of Opteron based servers from Appro, and that AMD knows about it. The 4U four way servers from Appro, a system builder, are part of AMD"s validated service programme out of Celestica. No need to ask what Appro is, it"s a system integrator, system integrator.
No Celestica isn"t a galaxy near Orion, it"s the favoured Ruiz firm to offer complete Opteron 800 and 200 systems, as you can read here. This kind of behaviour from Intel and AMD is commonplace. A few years back at the Other Plaice we reported that Intel was offering a small king"s ransom for some ahead of time AMD technology.
Now the AMD folk are having fun wondering whether Intel is going to move its critical data centers to the Opteron platform, wants to find out how sharp are the teeth of the shark that may eat its Xeon lunch, or just want to take the servers apart for research and development purposes, no doubt, as our informant tells us, with pained expressions being the order of the day on Intel engineers" faces.