Despite dual-core edge, AMD still on outs with Dell

Yet again Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) is poised to beat Intel Corp. to market with cutting-edge chip technology. But even though some customers are calling for Dell Inc. to use AMD processors, Dell -- the lone holdout among hardware makers -- has a strong incentive to take a pass. With the launch of AMD's dual-core Opteron processors expected this week, Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., and Sun Microsystems Inc. are preparing to unveil the second generation of their Opteron servers.

Dell executives reiterated the company's short-term intention of remaining a one-processor vendor at Dell's analyst meeting in Austin, Texas, during the first week of April, but as usual refused to rule out the prospect of releasing a product based on AMD's Opteron server processor or Athlon 64 desktop chip. The company's ongoing flirtation with AMD generates headlines, but it is mainly designed to wring additional concessions from its primary chip supplier, Intel, according to analysts and industry insiders.

Opteron's integrated memory controller and multiple Hypertransport interconnects help it outperform Intel's Xeon processor on many benchmarks, especially ones measuring the performance of memory-intensive applications, according to third-party reviewers. That advantage is expected to improve with the advent of dual-core processors. Intel's first dual-core Xeon processors for two-chip servers will share a bus connection to memory, which could hurt the processor's performance on applications that require the fast shuffling of data to and from memory.

University of Buffalo professor Russ Miller, who runs the university's Center for Computing Research, cited the issues with Intel's bus architecture design as one reason why Opteron is an alluring option for the high-performance computing community as well as some business customers. In conversations with executives including founder and Chairman Michael Dell, Miller has expressed his satisfaction in working with Dell's sales and engineering teams but also stated his desire for a Dell Opteron server, he said in an interview at Dell's analyst meeting.

"We don't see an option from Dell. But we know this is important to our industry," Miller said.

Intel has changed its bus architecture in products designed for servers with four or more chips. Its Truland platform, unveiled last month and designed for both single-core and dual-core chips, uses dual-independent front-side buses to double the number of pathways from the processors to the memory.

Opteron's performance advantage over Xeon, however, should be more evident this year. AMD will start shipping dual-core Opteron chips this week, but Intel isn't expected to release a dual-core Xeon product until early 2006.

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