HP and AMD Opteron: bed fellows at last

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has adopted Advanced Micro Devices’ (AMD’s) Opteron processor for its volume servers although HP has long used Intel’s Xeon processor exclusively. What does this mean for the server market (plus, what does it mean for average Joes who could really do with 64-bit power!)

After some speculations last year, Hewlett-Packard (HP) recently announced that it has finally adopted Advanced Micro Devices’ (AMD‘s) Opteron processor for its volume servers although HP has long used Intel’s Xeon processor exclusively. What does this mean for the server market (plus, what it means for users who wish to try out Windows XP 64-bit beta..)

Fortune has an interesting viewpoint: Why AMD is in the chips.

It’s anyone’s guess that a market opportunity exists in the space between IA-32 processors and Itanium server technology. Technologically, AMD’s Opteron processor neatly fits this space. However, AMD was challenged to find partners to bring its technology to the broad Windows and Linux server markets. HP’s adoption of AMD’s 64-bit Opteron chip meets this challenge. Although, it is hard not to notice that HP hasn’t really said that it’ll be replacing Intel’s Itanium 64-bit processor (of which it reigns supreme as a leading proponent), which carries a higher price tag along with increased computing power.

HP is not the first major vendor partner for AMD: IBM has already adopted Opteron in its high-performance systems, and Sun Microsystems has adopted Opteron in its volume server line. However, Gartner believes that HP will be the first vendor to commit to delivering Opteron-based servers that run on both Windows and Linux.

HP’s embrace of Opteron will do one or more of the following:

• Forcing IBM to broaden its commitment to Opteron
• Forcing Dell to take another look at this technology
• Spurring Intel to play its hand regarding its rumored “Yamhill” technology, which like Opteron, is allegedly a 32-bit processor with 64-bit extensions
• Creating confusion around the market opportunities for Itanium

It may be time for organizations to evaluate potential price/performance advantages of Opteron-based servers for terminal serving, Web serving, high-performance computer clusters and mainstream 32-bit applications. This evaluation should include running Opteron with the 32-bit version of Windows Server and the forthcoming 64-bit version of Windows Server.

If you have a tinkle of adventure in you, check out what Microsoft has made available: a test Windows XP for people with 64-bit CPUs!