Dell Inc., the world’s largest maker of personal computers, said that by the end of the year it would introduce servers powered by AMD Opteron microprocessors. The announcement comes years after the company was rumoured to embrace AMD chips, but remained the company, who used central processing units only from Intel Corp. 

“We will launch new ninth generation servers featuring Intel’s Woodcrest microprocessors. Dell will also introduce new AMD Opteron processors in our multi-processor servers by the end of the year offering a great new technology to our customers at the high-end of our server line,” a statement by the company reads.

Neither Dell, nor AMD unveiled details concerning server products featuring AMD processors, which may indicate that the plans are on the very early stage. Nevertheless, according to AMD, Dell will use the company’s dual-core Opteron processors in its PowerEdge servers. 

“We welcome Dell, and Dell customers, to the world of AMD64,” said Marty Seyer, AMD senior vice president, Commercial Business. “Dell is a customer-focused company and we’re pleased to see that they are listening to their customers and providing them the choice of innovative AMD products. We look forward to working closely with Dell in bringing the benefits of AMD leadership in performance-per-watt solutions to Dell customers”.

The majority of industry analysts agree that advantages of AMD processors over Intel chips can be noted primarily in servers and desktops, as AMD Opteron architecture has somewhat better scalability when it comes to multiprocessor systems, whereas performance-demanding desktop applications can take a lot of advantage of integrated memory controller in the AMD Athlon 64 chips. 

Technology Business Research said Friday that demand for AMD’s Opteron was very high and Dell’s lack of an Opteron-based server option had a negative effect on Dell’s server revenue. The research firm also believes that this is an indication that the market share gains by AMD made over the past 8 months will only continue to increase and will probably hold over the long-term.