HP Plans Opteron Products

Hewlett-Packard plans to announce Tuesday that it is developing products based on the Opteron processor from Advanced Micro Devices, say sources familiar with the company's plans.

The announcement comes one week after Intel announced plans to release a similar chip.

HP will become the third major server vendor to support Opteron, after IBM and Sun Microsystems announced product plans last year. Along with IBM, HP expects to offer Opteron products as well as products based on Nocona, the forthcoming version of Intel's Xeon server processor with 64-bit extensions technology, sources say.

An HP spokesperson declines comment. An AMD spokesperson did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

64-Bit Strategies

Both Intel and AMD have added 64-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set in order to develop their advanced processors. Nocona and Opteron can run both types of applications on the same server with a 64-bit operating system.

Nocona and Opteron are expected to be software-compatible, meaning they will run the same operating systems and applications. But the chips are expected to have slight performance differences based on their respective architectures that will allow server vendors to differentiate products based on the two chips, analysts say.

Opteron uses the Hypertransport interconnect standard and has an integrated memory controller, says Charles King, research director at The Sageza Group in Mountain View, California. Opteron's performance with those two features has delighted users, especially in the high-performance computing market, he says.

Of course, Intel is expected to put out a competitive product with its use of the PCI Express interconnect standard and a faster frontside bus than older Xeons, King says. In many cases, HP and IBM could simply let customers try out both products and discover which one is better suited for their environment, rather than losing sales to another vendor with only one of the chips, he adds.

Market Maneuvers

Now that Intel has publicly discussed its extensions technology, the news that HP will release Opteron products is not as groundbreaking as it would have been a few weeks ago, says Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata in Nashua, New Hampshire. HP signaled its interest in x86 extensions technology back in January, but didn't indicate what vendor it preferred at that time.

Intel is scheduled to release the Nocona processor some time in the second quarter, which means systems based on that chip probably won't be available until the end of the second quarter or the beginning of the third, Haff says.

Adopting Opteron gives HP a chance to enter the market now and not lose any sales waiting for Nocona, he adds.

HP rival Dell has signaled no interest in Opteron, saying at the Intel Developer Forum last week that it didn't think a broad enough market was willing to purchase Opteron servers at this time. If Dell isn't willing to participate, that's one more reason why HP would want to enter the market, Haff says.

Dell is HP's strongest competitor in the low-end server market, Haff says. Because HP competes on product differentiation while Dell competes on price, having Opteron servers in the product line gives HP another way to differentiate itself from Dell, he adds.