Dell Stuffs Barcelona into its PowerEdge Line

Dell is adding Advanced Micro Device’s quad-core chip to its server lineup.

The OEM now has four versions of its PowerEdge SC1435 system listed on its Web site that offer the AMD quad-core Opteron processor—known better as Barcelona—with starting prices ranging from $249 to $699. The Dell site also lists several other servers, including the four-socket PowerEdge 6950, that support the chip, but those do not offer prices or shipping details.

The Dell systems come after AMD announced April 9 that its quad-core Opteron chips for servers and workstations were finally shipping in volume after months of delays due to a design flaw. Although Dell waited until after the official announcement to offer the chip, Hewlett-Packard officials said in March that they would support the new Opteron processors across its product line.

The fact that AMD can now count Dell and HP among the vendors supporting Barcelona should come as a welcome relief for a company after several weeks of bad financial news. Earlier this month, the chip maker announced that its first-quarter 2008 revenue would be off by 15 percent and that it’s preparing to layoff 10 percent of its work force.

The two other major OEMs, Sun Microsystems and IBM, have not announced specific systems that will use the quad-core Opterons, but both vendors are expected to support the chips with new servers soon.

For now, Dell is offering four different Opteron 2300 series processors within its PowerEdge SC1435 system. The processors have clock speeds of 2.0GHz to 2.3GHz. Each chip offers 512KB of L2 cache with each core, and all four cores share 2MB of L3 cache.

The two-socket, 1U (1.75-inch) SC1435 supports up to 32GB of memory, and it will support up to 2TB of storage with two, SATA (Serial ATA) hard disk drives.

On its Web site, Dell also lists several other servers that will support AMD’s Opteron chip, including several rack-mount and tower systems. Some of these systems will support AMD’s 8300 series processors.