News
IBM Expands Lineup of AMD-Based Servers
International Business Machines Corp. picked one of the hottest days of the year, when many Americans are living with the threat of power outages, to unveil a line of computer servers that are designed to consume less juice than comparable machines.
The five new servers announced Tuesday are based on Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s next-generation Opteron processors. IBM already offered AMD-based servers, but these are Big Blue's first Opteron machines in a lower end of the market popular with smaller and medium-sized customers.
Joe Clabby, president of technology research firm Clabby Analytics, said the memory-access speeds of the new servers were particularly remarkable. But competitors were less impressed. Sun Microsystems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. also sell a range of Opteron-based servers.
The servers might have more meaning for AMD, which is deep in a price war with leading chip maker Intel Corp. IBM also uses Intel chips in many servers.
IBM shares fell 1.3 percent to $76.14 on the New York Stock Exchange, where AMD lost 1.5 percent to $19.10. Intel shares were down 1.9 percent at $17.66 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.