By Mark Fontecchio
IT professionals want Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) to give Intel a run for its money in x86 server processors, but they’re not necessarily willing to jump ship to the underdog chipmaker.
“When I think of AMD, I think of the consumer market,” said Scott Rowe, the director in the CTO office at Emdeon, a Nashville, Tenn.-based healthcare company. Emdeon, which Rowe calls an Intel shop, also has some IBM Power-based servers, mostly running AIX and some Linux.
Indeed, most PC makers offer AMD-based laptop and PC models, and many observers now expect AMD’s second-generation Athlon Neo and Turion processors to make a splash in ultraportable PCs. But AMD remains a distant also-ran in the server room. While always lagging Intel in market share, AMD has a reputation for beating Intel to market with faster, higher core-count processors.
