Dell, AMD Partnership Said To Be Expanding

Dell is expected to announce Thursday that it is expanding its partnership with AMD to include new servers, desktops and laptops with the company’s chipset, according to a report from Cnet.

Dell eliminated its exclusivity with Intel in May, committing to sell a four-processor server with AMD's Opteron by the end of 2006. Sources familiar with the company's plans expect a broader alliance to be announced Thursday, when Dell releases its quarterly financial result, Cnet reported.

The chip change hopes to catch Dell up with its three main rivals, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems. Sun and HP already had a full line of Opteron servers, and IBM followed suit earlier this month.

A broader AMD alliance would also be a new hit to Intel, which remains dominant in the x86 server market but has seen AMD move in on the company’s market. Intel's new Xeon 5100 "Woodcrest" processor is now competitive with AMD’s Opteron.