Dell picks up AMD Four way only thoughBy Charlie Demerjian: Friday 19 May 2006, 08:00DELL FINALLY BIT the bullet and jumped on the AMD train, barely. They have picked up MP servers according to their financial statements, and confirmed by AMD.This announcement raises more questions than it answers though, starting with 'why now?', closely followed by 'only?', and rounded out by 'for how long?'. These are not easy things to answer, all the tea leaves point toward a big Intel resurgence this year. What does Dell know that we don't?
Dell buys AMD chips Hell frozenBy Nick Farrell: Friday 19 May 2006, 08:02THE INTEL only shop, Dell, has decided to start using an AMD Opteron chip in one of its high-end servers.Dell CEO Kevin Rollins said that it was a fairly small category and so it was not an abandoning of the glorious alliance between Intel and Dell.That was not to say that Dell would not use AMD chips in its PCs or other servers in the future, but whatever happened, Intel would remain number one, he said.Out of all the PC products that Dell was planning this year all of them will use Intel chips, but he didn’t say what would happen next year.Rollins said that Dell had not moved to AMD in its server products sooner because it had been "waiting to see what its customers who bought its servers wanted"."AMD was very successful, so we are using it," he said.Chuffed AMD senior vice president Marty Seyer said he was pleased to see Dell "listening to their customers" and providing them the choice of AMD products, he beamed.
Dell has announced plans to open two retail stores later this year, abandoning its adherence to Internet and mail order sales.The Austin-American Statesman reports that the computer maker will open a store in Dallas, close to its Texas home, and one in New York in bid to capitalise on rising consumer sales.The company has always insisted that retail stores would be loss making, but Apple's success in generating over $1bn worth of sales in a single quarter through its network of more than 100 stores appears to have presaged a change of heart.However Dell won't be changing its tried-and-trusted policy of building every machine to order. Visitors to the new stores will be able to view and tryout products but they will not be able to buy and take away.'It's a physical extension of the direct model,' Jim Skelding, director of the pilot programme told the Statesman, Click here to find out more! ADVERTISEMENT'so customers can touch and feel the products.'
Dell's defection to AMD dissected Who screwed whoBy Charlie Demerjian: Wednesday 14 June 2006, 15:38 THE DELL DEFECTION to AMD last month made absolutely no sense to me. There were theories, half-baked ideas, and flat-out fanboi-isms all over the place, though. The more I thought about it, the less sense it made, and no explanation out there was even close to filling out the majority of the gaps. The biggest question left open was 'Why now?', something that had all the feel of the Star Wars quote 'Leave? In our our moment of triumph?'. Nothing short of Intel declaring all out war on Dell made sense. Well, that looks to be exactly what Intel did, they just screwed Dell, and signaled probably the largest power shift in the industry in years, but no one seems to have noticed.Let's start out with the question of what happened, basically Dell picked up a very small line of AMD parts, 4S servers. If server parts are about 10 per cent of x86 CPUs sold, and 4S servers are about ten per cent of that, this leaves the deal with a piddling one per cent of the x86 market. We hear that ten per cent of server sales is worth 30 per cent of the server revenue, not a small amount by anyone's standards. Still, its loss won't break Intel by any means. AMD will get a nice kick in the bottom line. But, let's face it, they bought their Ferraris long ago anyway. The biggest net effect of the deal was psychological. You could almost hear the Wall Street monkeys peeing themselves as they ran around in circles bumping their heads into things, laughing maniacally. They utterly failed to explain it, and from everything I read, those that did try were flat out wrong.The explanations they came out with were that AMD was going to continue to steamroller Intel for the next few decades, but the Woodcrest numbers threw cold water on that plan. Their mouths were foamy at the idea of K8L, but again, that's a year out. Intel production limited? That is a six-month thing, not nearly enough for Dell to make a switch, much less jeopardize the billions that Intel funnels its way to keep that upstart HP in place. Dell was comfy, and if it had to sling dull boxes at a few fewer-than-anticipated numbers for two more quarters, it was worth it for the preferential treatment they got for being 100 per cent Intel.The rabid conspiracy people also brought up the lawsuit, and this has a grain of truth to it, but not for the reasons that anyone I ever read up on mentioned. The problem here is that AMD forced Intel's hand with the lawsuit, and the result was that all-out war on Dell I mentioned. Yes, the industry-shaking news was that Intel is pricing fairly. Oh the shock and horror. What's next, their sales reps having to tow the official line on fair play?Think about this for a minute, Dell has always got the best deals, got the best CPUs at the most favorable timing. For Intel, there was Dell and others, with little mom-and-pop outfits like IBM and HP being lumped in with Eugene's Bait, Yarn and CPU Discount Warehouse. This is the main reason Dell could hammer everyone into the ground, it got such preferential pricing on the most expensive component of said dull black boxes that if everyone else matched everything else, they would still win.Make no mistake about it, when Intel cut this out, it gutted Dell. Apple is the new darling at Intel, while it also makes black boxes, it also makes prettier white ones that go better on stage, and Otellini's kids were probably pestering him for iPods. Dell is in deep trouble, it has no R&D, and HP can now match it on price. The jump to AMD was not a market shift, or a large signal of upcoming CPU supremacy in any way, shape or form. It was simply a backhand to Intel for screwing them. If you look at the flailing on Wall Street over this, it seems to have worked, Dell and AMD stock up, Intel down. I'll bet that pissed off Intel financial types.Looking out over the next year or so, Intel will mostly likely take back a lot of 1S business, some 2S, and get its face tap-danced on in 4S until Tigertown. Even then, there are very compelling reasons why AMD may retain the crown, so that is why Dell, once unshackled, made the moves itdid. If any of the various superiority or inferiority claims made by the pundits were even close, Dell would be selling AMD all over the place immediately, or at least offering it all over. You will notice that did not happen. It will keep trickling products in here and there, where there is a pricing advantage, nothing more, nothing less.So, why did Intel declare war on Dell? Simple, AMD is likely to screw them both in the lawsuit. All of the rumblings I have heard say that AMD knows where the bodies are buried, and this summer should have some fairly colourful anecdotes surfacing. Are these whispers actionable? Damn good question. Either way, based on the way Intel is reacting, it looks like it is trying to blunt any judgment against it with the age-old 'we don't do that anymore' excuse. Ending blatant favoritism is a good start, and pre-emptively doing it is one hell of a chunk of plausible deniability, and plays well to semi-educated jurors.So, this momentous technology announcement is nothing more than a grumpy backhand from Dell with love to Intel. Why did Intel do it? AMDs lawyers. What does AMD gain? A level playing field* and some headlines. It is not the monumental advance that people claim, it is just PR and spite. Don't you love this industry? µ
AMD Dell deal is a big Dell deal indeed Desktops, laptops, and serversBy Charlie Demerjian: Thursday 03 August 2006, 15:43 WE KEEP HEARING about the secretive Dell AMD deal, but no one is talking anything serious, and most reports are just smoke and mirrors. If I am going to have to wear a bunny suit, I am going to know why, damn it. The short story is all signs point to this deal being huge, and I mean well into double digit percentages of Dell shipments from the early stages.A wise but nameless man was talking to me about AMD's plans at Computex last year, just about the time when Turion notebooks were actually poking their heads out of the ground after a long winter. He said that AMD had a long term plan, first servers, then laptops, then desktops. They were on servers, and I was seeing laptops. I corrected him and said 'don't you mean servers, desktops and then laptops, you already own the retail desktop market'. He grinned. Silly reporter, no cookie.The desktop assault begins now. You saw the Lenovo deal, and various other bits and pieces, but it is time for the real launch to begin soon. The raw numbers we hear are above 10 million CPUs, but the time frame keeps changing. Some people say hard targets of three to four million CPUs a quarter, other give mildly different variations. Several sources are pointing at 33-50% of Dell business desktops in the near future. This deal is as big as you can get, and will cut across servers, desktops and laptops.If you do the sums, and about 60 million CPUs are sold a quarter, this will boost AMD's market share by about five points or so, pushing it perilously close to the 30% it keeps talking about. This is going to change a lot of long held beliefs about what the industry is, and who holds what power.AMD can't really compete on raw power once Core2SquaredDuoDeuxWhatever ramps, but can compete on price. Looking at the numbers from the excellent HP 63xx line series laptops, the AMD price advantage is $180, not an insubstantial sum. If you are buying 1,000 of them, do you worry about 30 minutes battery life or a 15 plus per cent discount? AMD is going to do the same in Dell laptops, and may be able to significantly undercut Intel there too.The end result, if it is only half as big as we are hearing, will drive huge business to AMD, Nvidia and of course ATI, which makes the timing of the buy pretty fortuitous. If you doubt this is anything less th
Dell adds AMD chips to desktop PC lineSAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Dell Inc., the world's No. 1 PC maker, will use microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in some of its consumer desktop computers, breaking its exclusive PC chip supply agreement with Intel Corp.Dell said Thursday it will offer AMD's Athlon chip in its Dimension computer line due out next month, building on a relationship the companies began in mid-May that calls for Dell to use AMD processors in its high-end server line by year's end.The moves further reduce Dell's reliance on Intel, which for years has been the sole provider of chips to Dell.Round Rock, Tex-based Dell also said Thursday its net income fell to $502 million from $1.02 billion a year ago.While Dell remains the world's top PC maker, it's growing its share at a slower rate than it top rival, Hewlett-Packard Co. Dell said its partnerships with AMD will enhance its product offerings.The Dell-AMD deal may be a blow to Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel, which is hamstrung by a glut of PC chips and weaker sales. The world's largest chipmaker has been cutting prices on its PC chips to rid itself of excess inventory.Before the announcement, which had been speculated in the financial community and the press, Morgan Stanley analyst Mark Edelstone wrote in a research note: "It should have a negative impact on Intel and it could be a large offset to the expected benefits from Intel's restructuring efforts."AMD, which has become a more formidable competitor to Intel, has been expanding its manufacturing capacity, a sign that it expects to be shipping more chips. Its chief goal is to put itself in position to supply 33% of the global microprocessor market by 2008.The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chipmaker is boosting output at two of its German-based factories and is considering constructing a new plant in New York. A nonbinding agreement was signed with state officials in late June. In addition, Chartered Semiconductor recently started making chips for AMD at its Singapore-based plant.
No wonder i've been feeling cold lately but seriously thats cool we might be seeing a colabo between apple and microsoft better get some firewood ready .
Dell AMD boxes vastly cheaper than Intel How about a 3800+ for half a E6300By Charlie Demerjian: Thursday 14 September 2006, 22:17 IT LOOKS LIKE Dell is playing AMD as the value line for its new Dimension PCs we told you about last week. What we didn't know at the time was how much of a value they would be, it turns out to be quite a lot. If Dell shoppers are as dum^h^h^h value conscious as they are portrayed to be, then AMD is in really good shape.How good a deal are they? How about the cheapest AMD Dimension E521 (AMD) for less than half of the cheapest Core 2 Duo Squared The Revenge, far less. How about almost half of the cheapest PD? If you hunt long and hard you will eventually find the raw config pages, not the shiny bundle pages, and that is where the interesting stuff is.Those pages are not flagged with bright orange 'More value with AMD' labels, but the message is not lost. On those shiny ones, you can get an AMD box for about $200 less than Intel. When you look at the raw config pages, AMD here and Intel here, you can find the true prices. The cheapest I could make an AMD based box was $279, that is a Sempr0n 3400+, lose the modem, monitor and speakers while dropping RAM to 512MB. Upping the CPU to an X2 3800+ brings the total to $359. Hardly a screamer, but quite a workable office machine even with the Sempr0n.On Intel, you can only go as low as $379 for the same config as AMD, but with a Celeron D 346. Upgrading to a PD 805 or a Core 2 Duo II ^2 E6300 will bring you to $559 and $759 respectively.The lowest end Intel box is almost 50% more than the cheapest AMD, and the cheapest dual core machines are at a similar premium. The cheapest 2 Core 2 the Second is notably more than twice the cheapest AMD dual core. These are not trivial differences.While the Intel Core II boxes might be faster, you can get 2 AMD boxes for the price of one Intel, and when you are outfitting 1000 employees, that is a big deal. Intel may have the faster box by a wide margin, but I fail to see how a computer that waits longer for you to type is important to the average worker.All in all, I think the AMD based Dells are a very attractive proposition. For the vast majority of people out there, the extra money saved is well worth it, I can see why Dell went AMD now. This is going to be a very interesting Christmas season with prices like these, AMD will do very well indeed. µ
