Wednesday, December 4th 2019
Amidst Intel CPU Shortage Woes, Dell Reportedly Looking Into AMD Alternatives
That news title should come as a surprise to no one, and extends to most other PC makers who are affected by Intel's inability to keep up with demand on its 14 nm (+++++?) node. News of Intel's factories being outputting less than the entire professional and consumer markets are required has already been covered multiple times and in multiple ways. Sand steps Intel has taken to mitigate this issue whilst trying to solve its 10 nm execution woes range from moving chipset production up from its 14 nm nodes to 22 nm to free capacity, increase production capacity over the already installed one, and even outsource some of its silicon manufacturing to other players in the industry. However, these measures won't actually take effect in the availability equation in a heartbeat, and of course PC makers such as Dell, who has already revised its revenue forecast and placed the blame on Intel, are looking to alternatives.Dell has already had some products based on AMD designs, but most of the company's lineups, irrespective of market, are based on Intel platforms. That they are considering AMD is obvious; all other makers are surely doing that, especially considering the overall value proposition from AMD CPUs. Dell CFO Tom Sweet, for one, told yahoo Finance that they are "Evaluating AMD" as a partner, and that they expect Intel's shortages to only by fixed by the second half of 2020. Should AMD be able to entrench themselves as a viable alternative (which they already are; but companies do take their business relations seriously, and they would do so even more when it comes to Intel), then they could carve themselves a space that would then be difficult for Intel to recover. or, of course, this news may serve only as a way for Dell and other manufacturers to put some pressure on Intel to achieve better materials acquisition deals - Intel is bound to be eager not to let AMD penetrate the market as much as their chips deserve to.
Sources:
Yahoo Finance, via Tom's Hardware
44 Comments on Amidst Intel CPU Shortage Woes, Dell Reportedly Looking Into AMD Alternatives
I mean, at Intel it should be like this :
"Give Dell what it wants, then give Apple what it wants and finally split whatever is left to the others"
I'd take it.
xD
Losing OEMs to AMD is sort of a huge deal, it was a very sacred thing for them so far.
trog
When the 5055 was first announced, it was going to launch with the Ryzen R5 1600 as the mid-range config. I know this because our university was wanting to buy 50 of them to evaluate for updating all of our classrooms. After about 3 months of our sales rep being told that the 5055 was still undergoing validation, and that yes we still explicitly wanted to try the ryzen processors - we will still wait... our rep was told that the 5055 was canceled as not being "financial viable" for Dell, but magically we were offered "equivalent" Intel for $300 below normal cost.
And sadly since we are a state entity, we had to take that offer as lowest bid + we were out of time to spend fiscal year.
its also a fishing game to see if Dells with AMD installed would be acceptable.
trog
It's easy to offer 2 different platforms in a large desktop. This is not the segment Dell has supply issues. Desktop CPUs are abundant for the sales potential this gaming line has.
And Dell has been using AMD CPUs often, so I don't understand what this changes.
In fact, Aurora lineup replaces Area 51, which was the flagship PC for previous gen Threadripper. This is currently only available with A10 APU and it's been like that for a long time.
I don't know why. Maybe AMD can't supply enough CPUs as well? :)