Dell getting close to choosing AMD very soon?

[keith]

Normally, I'd tend to agree with you about this, and I'd normally hold
the send button on this story, except for several reasons now. The
story has not only been picked up by several news sites, the Dell CEO
himself is stating it in public (i.e. in front of reporters).

Same story, diferent year. ZZZzzz...

Secondly, AMD just signed an outsourcing deal with Chartered a couple
of days ago.
Ok?

Thirdly, AMD's stock price has gone up over 15% in two
days, so it looks like the Wall Street crooks ...er, investment firms
are all over it too.

Ok, please 'splain AMD's stock over the past couple-o-months.

&asside. I'm happy a good share of my wife's IRA is in AMD. OTOH, I
had her move out of APPL a few months ago into a stock that has
absolutely sucked. :-(
&asside/.

It's still conceivable that Dell pull another fast one this time too.
They are not announcing an AMD product roadmap, just saying that they
definitely are looking at it. Also they aren't talking about big volumes
here, i.e. not about Athlons or Semprons here, just Opterons for
servers.

Same song, different year. My bet is on a repeat of the past. Though
perhpas Mikey can convince Intel to do a desktop AMD64. 'Twould be
interesting if it were a Dell-only version though.

 

[keith]

Dell designs hardware? That's a good one.

To be fair, they do servers.

 

[George Macdonald]

To be fair, they do servers.

Yeah and they *do* networking as well. Hell Mikey was voted Networking Man
of the Year by Network World's readers last year.ô_Ô

Do they actually design the mbrds though? I'd think it's sub-contracted to
Jabil or the likes, or taken off a mbrd mfr's shelf... with maybe a coupla
tweaks. I believe they are also still partnered with EMC on SAN and other
server stuff.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

[keith]

Yeah and they *do* networking as well. Hell Mikey was voted Networking Man
of the Year by Network World's readers last year.ô_Ô

I love it! ^^^

Do they actually design the mbrds though? I'd think it's sub-contracted to
Jabil or the likes, or taken off a mbrd mfr's shelf... with maybe a coupla
tweaks. I believe they are also still partnered with EMC on SAN and other
server stuff.

Do they actualy lay 'em out? Do they specify their performance and let
the contractor do the engineering? Actually I don't know, for a fact, but
it was my impression that they actually did the design work on their
"enterprise" class widgets. Mundane things like layout and production...

 

[chrisv]

Customer demand is part of it but I think that their Linux strategy is
determined more by what it says to Microsoft then what it says to their
customers.

I think you're mistaken.

They only offer Linux on the high end servers and they sell
those machines for the same price as the XP servers. So they aren't
undercutting Microsoft on price

So? Why should they sell the Redaht package for less than Windows?
Many customers for servers wouldn't use Windows if it was given away
for free.

but they are sending them a message that
they could if they wanted to.

Bah. They're trying to make money. It's not news to anyone that a
computer company can sell Linux machines if they want.

 

[rstlne]

Dell designs hardware? That's a good one.

Yeap..
They do actually (or at least they did not so long ago)..

You had a Dell Power supply, Dell motherboard, Dell case, Dell connections
on the inside..
They would take a companys base design.. Say a MSI board.. Decide where to
chop power, where to increase power, How they would like the pinconnections
and a few other bits and then it would be made by MSI ..

Do they design anything from the ground up.. I doubt that (Unless it's their
cases).. But just because they dont make/build/design it all 100% then you
cant say that they dont design these things..

 

[keith]

Yeap..
They do actually (or at least they did not so long ago)..

You had a Dell Power supply, Dell motherboard, Dell case, Dell connections
on the inside..
They would take a companys base design.. Say a MSI board.. Decide where to
chop power, where to increase power, How they would like the pinconnections
and a few other bits and then it would be made by MSI ..

That's not design, rahter marketing (or "marketeering").

Do they design anything from the ground up.. I doubt that (Unless it's their
cases).. But just because they dont make/build/design it all 100% then you
cant say that they dont design these things..

I'm pretty sure they do thir high-end server designs iYou use. THe rest
of the stuff is dreck anyway.

 

[George Macdonald]

Yeap..
They do actually (or at least they did not so long ago)..

You had a Dell Power supply, Dell motherboard, Dell case, Dell connections
on the inside..
They would take a companys base design.. Say a MSI board.. Decide where to
chop power, where to increase power, How they would like the pinconnections
and a few other bits and then it would be made by MSI ..

Do they design anything from the ground up.. I doubt that (Unless it's their
cases).. But just because they dont make/build/design it all 100% then you
cant say that they dont design these things..

If you talk like that to a real designer he's going to fall down
laughing... or whack you round the ear, depending on what side of bed he
got out of. Even if you accept that sense of the word there's nothing
there which would preclude the use of AMD CPUs.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

[Tony Hill]

Yeap..
They do actually (or at least they did not so long ago)..

You had a Dell Power supply, Dell motherboard, Dell case, Dell connections
on the inside..
They would take a companys base design.. Say a MSI board.. Decide where to
chop power, where to increase power, How they would like the pinconnections
and a few other bits and then it would be made by MSI ..

Do they design anything from the ground up.. I doubt that (Unless it's their
cases).. But just because they dont make/build/design it all 100% then you
cant say that they dont design these things..

There isn't exactly a whole lot of "design" work actually going on
here, at least not on the desktops. Actually I wouldn't be at all
supervised if they've even subcontracted out most of what you
mentioned above. They've definitely outsourced a lot of their
production (as has HP), and I don't just mean for components. The
systems themselves are almost all assembled in south-east Asia these
days.

For laptops there is even less design involved, they've pretty much
totally outsourced all the work to Compal, Quanta and maybe one or two
other companies (again, HP is in the exact same boat here). Funny
thing comparing HP and Dell these days is that they have a fair chunk
of their business model to the same companies. I know that they use
the same firms to make their laptops and at least some of the
components in their systems. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they
use the same companies to assemble their systems, and I know that some
of their outsourced tech support is handled by the same couple of
companies. In the end, the real difference between these two (at
least in terms of desktops and laptops) is mostly down to marketing.

 

[keith]

If you talk like that to a real designer he's going to fall down
laughing... or whack you round the ear, depending on what side of bed he
got out of.

Hey! SOme of us are rather nice people. Well, at least 'tripper has
always been a kind soul. ;-)

Even if you accept that sense of the word there's nothing
there which would preclude the use of AMD CPUs.

Sure. It's all about profits. AMD is getting too big (or is it that
Intel's fallen over itself too many times?) to simply ignore.

 

[Thomas A. Horsley]

Sure. It's all about profits. AMD is getting too big (or is it that

Intel's fallen over itself too many times?) to simply ignore.

And as far as profits go, there is the little matter that some (not all) of
their server customers are going to be technically bright enough to be aware
of the fantastically better price/performance of Opteron over either of
Intel's 64 bit platforms and they are gonna demand Opteron (I am constantly
amazed by the performance of the Opteron development system we have at work
compared to all the other platforms we use).
--email: (e-mail address removed) icbm: Delray Beach, FL |
<URL:http://home.att.net/~Tom.Horsley> Free Software and Politics <<==+