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HP Ships 4-way, Opteron-based Server

HP on Wednesday began shipping its first four-way server based on the AMD Opteron processor, AMD's 64-bit server processor that uses the x86 instruction set.

The availability of the HP ProLiant DL585 server delivers on a commitment HP made in February to shipping the Opteron-based server. "HP is pushing back on competitors in the server market with competitive pricing and more choice on x86 servers that deliver customers the best price/performance in the industry," James Mouton, vice president of HP's platform division, Industry Standard Servers, said in a statement.

The server starts at an estimated price of $8,300.

In addition to improving customer choice, the addition of a major computermaker like HP turns up the heat on Intel in the lucrative, four-way, industry-standard server space, where Intel's high-performance 32-bit Xeon processors dominate.

Intel is addressing AMD's year-old Opteron chips in two ways. Microsoft has released a software driver that allows 32-bit code to run on Intel Itanium 2 64-bit processors. Intel also built 64-bit extensions into its Nocona line of 32-bit Xeon processors.

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.