HP Servers, Thin Clients Juiced By AMD

Just a week after saluting the virtues of Intel, Hewlett Packard is returning to the praises of its other partner, AMD.

HP (Quote, Chart)&nbspis marking the 10-year anniversary of selling systems with AMD (Quote, Chart)&nbspprocessors by introducing new ProLiantservers today. They are based on the latest AMD chips as well as the first HP thin client to use AMD processors.

“AMD continues to deliver a great processor, we’re seeing great
performance,” Steve Cumings, group manager, ProLiant Opteron systems at HP,
told internetnews.com. Cumings also lauded the power efficiency of
the new Opteron’s model 185, 285 and 885, which operate at the 95-watt level.

The upgrade to AMD’s latest 2.6 GHz dual-core Opteron processors introduced earlier this month is the only notable change to HP’s ProLiant line of Opteron-based servers which includes two- and four-way models. “The new processor plugs in the same way,” said Cumings. “We have customers that like to qualify a server which can take over a year, but this is something they can continue to buy with no delay.”

Specifically, HP will be upgrading its ProLiant DL145 G2, DL385 and DL585 rack-based, density-optimized servers, plus its full line of Opteron-based server blades — the HP ProLiant BL25p, BL35p and BL45p. The servers will use the new Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor Model 185, 285 or 885.

Analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group credits HP for having a good strategy in carrying both AMD and Intel-based systems which he says positions them in between Sun Microsystems and Dell. Sun has emerged as a staunch AMD supporter but doesn’t carry Intel, while Dell has remained Intel only despite speculation for months it will add AMD to its mix.

“AMD’s Opteron is a higher performing product than Intel’s Xeon,” Enderle told internetnews.com. “You can’t buy features that Intel is talking about down the road, you buy what’s on the market.”

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