Et tu, Dell! Going AMD?

NEW YORK: Dell Inc., the No. 1 personal computer maker and the best customer of leading computer chip maker Intel, is mulling using rival chips from AMD, its chief executive said.

Chief Executive Kevin Rollins said the company was considering using Advanced Micro Devices chips for some future server products, but stressed that Dell had no formal plans as yet to embrace AMD.

"We have been studying AMD closely. Some of their products are more advanced," Rollins told reporters during a conference call following the company's third-quarter earnings report.

"We have not announced using any AMD products," he added.

AMD has beaten rival Intel Corp. to market with a new generation of 64-bit microprocessor chips that handle twice as many bits in the same processing cycle as older 32-bit personal computer chips.

Dell has remained the lone holdout among the world's top personal computer makers in refusing to use microprocessors from Intel's smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. It remains in Rollins' own words "a 100 percent Intel shop."

Analysts believe that 2005 will mark an intense year of upgrades of server computers to 64-bit chips after Microsoft Corp. introduces software designed to take advantage of 64-bit processing early next year.

"As customers become aware that next-generation software will generally 'require' 64-bit systems, we believe that demand will steadily increase," analyst Mark Stahlman of Wall Street research firm Caris & Co. wrote in a note earlier this week.

"Dell will remedy this situation and probably begin selling AMD-based products sometime in the first half of 2005," he said.