Since its release in early 2003, AMD's Opteron server CPU has made great inroads almost everywhere... except with Dell. The CEO of Dell, Kevin Rollins, says that may very well be about to change, as the company is considering selling Opteron servers sooner rather than later.
"My guess is we're going to want to add that [AMD] product line in the future," Rollins said in an interview on Wednesday with InfoWorld editors. "They've been getting better and better. The technology is better. In some areas they're now in the lead on Intel. That is what is interesting us more than anything," he said.
This isn't the first time Dell has made noises about selling machines with AMD processors. In the past, such statements have been aimed primarily at extracting concessions from Intel, which currently supplies the CPUs for all of Dell's products. What leads many to believe that Dell isn't just blowing smoke this time is that the Opteron rules the commodity 64-bit server space, a fact not lost on Dell, which is the lone holdout among the major computer manufacturers when it comes to AMD. If Dell does begin offering AMD systems, even if they are confined to servers and high-end gaming boxes, it would be a still be major accomplishment for AMD.
News source: Arstechnica
