Is the answer Dell?

What computer manufacturer is the leading direct seller in the USA?
What computer manufacturer does not use AMD CPUs in any of its line-up?
What computer manufacturer is now suggesting that the Opteron looks interesting?
What computer manufacturer could just be pulling Intel's chain?

Yes, the answer to all four questions is Dell. Why bother re-hashing old news? "My guess is we're going to want to add that [AMD] product line in the future," said Dell President and CEO Kevin Rollins in an interview with InfoWorld on November 11th. But he even went on to even offer direct flattery: "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.

Okay, repeat after me... Yeah, sure.

It's not that it's impossible. With Michael Dell theoretically out of the way, it is possible that AMD could be re-introduced to Dell, at least in the server and game machine lines. ("If we basically sucked up all of AMD's [manufacturing] capacity it would not be enough. They don't have enough capacity for us to use them on the desktop. For us, fundamentally, AMD is much more interesting in the server, workstation or gaming arenas.") But it's equally as possible that Dell is simply dangling the carrot in hopes that Intel will bite at it. Dell is, possibly, Intel's largest customer. Intel, possibly, has been messing up big time lately from the perspective of its largest customer. This could be nothing more than Dell's less than subtle way of telling Intel to get its act together.

Time will tell and, as far as Dell has been concerned historically, Intel still has the advantage in clock speed.
# Permalink   Posted at 2:44 AM        5 comments       Email this Link