Dell Computer Corp. has no plans to develop Opteron servers “today,” contradicting a French report that Dell officials said misquoted founder Michael Dell.
French IT publication o1net quoted Michael Dell as saying, “Quant à savoir si proposer à la fois des serveurs Intel et AMD au catalogue a un sens, la réponse est clairement oui,” or “As for knowing whether to suggest offering, at the same time, servers from both Intel and AMD within our (product) catalog, the answer is clearly yes.”
01net did not indicate whether Dell gave the interview in French or if his comments were translated. In any case, Dell spokeswoman Wendy Giever said that Dells comments were apparently misquoted.
Throughout its history, Dell has shipped products conaining only Intel processors, when virtually all of its competitors offer at least some PCs and/or servers containing chips from rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Just as financial insiders pick apart Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspans comments for clues as to the agencys plans, so has the technology industry tried to determine when Dell might adopt AMDs chips.
So far, however, Dells stance remains unchanged .
“We have developed PowerEdge servers and Precision workstations with 64-bit memory extensions on the [Intel] Nocona Xeon platform,” Giever said. “We have no plans to introduce products using AMD processors today.”
Dell has historically purchased and tested AMD processors within its labs, and Giever said that process continues. But, she said, “we feel were pretty well covered with what were offering.”
Part of the reason Dell hasnt adopted the Opteron, and wont make a big push around the 64-bit capabilities of Intels extended Xeon processors, is the lack of applications. To date, Giever said, most 64-bit apps are hand-coded and designed for the high-performance computing and scientific markets, which Dell has de-emphasized in favor of high-volume servers.