AMD's new Opteron 4000 chips seem to be getting accepted in all the right places, even from Intel channel partners.
Intel chum SGI which makes High Performance Computing and data centre gear has just announced that it is supporting the AMD Opteron 4000 Series platforms across its server platforms.
New SGI servers featuring the AMD Opteron 4100 Series processor technology are now in the shops for customers that require high performance in the smallest possible power footprint.
The AMD Opteron 4100 Series processor is offered in four new SGI CloudRack and Rackable scale-out servers whichcan be installed in either traditional data centre racks or in ICE Cube modular data centres.
What appears to have won SGI over is the power savings which fit into SGI's cunning save a Polar Bear plan.
The thumbs up for Opterons comes just three months after a remarkably similar announcement from SGI about sticking the Intel Xeon processor 5600 series (codenamed "Westmere-EP") across its entire server lineup.
It looks like SGI is currently running a foot in both camps. It liked the Xeons because it has more cores, but then again so did the AMD ones. Which way is a channel partner going to turn?
http://download.intel.com/pressroom/legal/AMD_settlement_agreement.pdf
"Intel shall not award...consideration of any kind that is conditioned orally in writing...to express implied mutual understanding between Intel and the customer limiting or restricting...its freedom to satisfy any or all of its demand for microprocessors for computer products through the customer's exclusive use of x86 Intel Microprocessors..."
"Intel shall not withhold or threaten to withhold any Benefit, not impose or threaten to impose any penalty, on the basis of a customer's refusal to accede to a condition..."
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It is in SGI's best interest to be supplier-agnostic, that way they can meet their customers' needs best.