[CentOS] apple to Intel -- AMD v. Intel (for servers)

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Wed, 2005-06-08 at 17:50 +0800, Franki wrote:
> Just AMD's existance is enough to ensure that Intel play ball.
> How long do you suppose it would take for Apple to play the AMD ball to 
> get price discounts?

Since I consider this really is largely a discussion about PC _servers_,
I'm going to make this comment.

There's really no "leverage" Apple can make any more than Dell.  Apple
is going to be an Intel partner at the level of Dell, so they will
already be getting substantial discounts.  People don't realize that
from a 1st tier OEM viewpoint, AMD is _no_cheaper_ than Intel --
especially when Intel funds so much OEM R&D and advertising.

Furthermore, AMD's new advantage is servers.  It really says something
when HP, who co-designed IA-64 as the replacement for PA-RISC (and not
just x86), switches to Opteron and tells their Intel partner "we aren't
going to do any more R&D on Itanium."  Dell's current AMD flirting is
far more about servers than anything remotely related to desktops.

Because people consider AMD today for performance and reliability --
especially on the server.

Now people say Apple and the MacOS X platform is a desktop platform.  I
beg to differ -- especially now that it's going to be on x86.  And if
they shed the Mach Microkernel, then it really might really change.
Which begs the question if Apple would consider AMD.

> If Apple runs on x86, then it would require very little work to get OSX 
> happy on AMD as well, particularly the new ones that have SSE3 and dual 
> core.

Dual-core is only on Opteron until the fall.  In reality, from a server
I/O aspect, dual-core is not that much of a boost.

But yes, dual-core on the Opteron (and Athlon64 this fall) has far less
latency and reliability issues than Intel P4 or Xeon dual-core.  Memory
channels are still direct and the HyperTransport interconnect was
designed to work glueless in or off-IC, no different.  Intel can't just
keep hacking on more and more hubs and assume no issues.

> With IBM apple knew they had no real barganing position, that is not the
> case with Intel.

IBM is a foundary.  Heck, I'm sure Sony and Microsoft are getting
priority over their own Power product line.  The ideal product for a
foundary is al


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                     b.j.smith at ieee.org 
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