AMD Woos System Builders

During its World Premiere event here Wednesday evening at Xchange Tech Builder, AMD executives held up the company's "customer-centric" innovation in 64-bit computing, its HyperTransport technology, its role in DDR memory adoption, its move to an integrated memory architecture, bid to provide power management on the desktop, and support for enhanced virus protection as reasons that system builders should choose to lead with PCs and servers built on the AMD architecture.

"We've gone from being the follower to a leadership position," said John Morris, manager of desktop product marketing for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based vendor.

Morris and Gary Bixler, manager of the system builder channel for North America, AMD, called upon several of the vendor's partners to help underscore their message during a parody of post-game sports TV commentary shows, dubbed the "Best Darn Processor Show. Period."

Jack Steeg, vice president of sales and marketing for Celistica, the Toronto-based contract manufacturer, said the quality of AMD's platform helped convinced his company to sign a multimillion contract with the vendor to produce what he called "validated servers."

id
unit-1659132512259
type
Sponsored post

"AMD has done a phenomenal job, qualitywise, with the product," he said.

Under the deal, Celestica is working to produce next-generation designs that are tested in concert with AMD and that can then be resold by AMD system builders and solutio providers.

"We're the closest thing you can get to an AMD-branded product today," Steeg added.

James Cunningham, sever sales engineer with Bass Computers, a Houston-based system builder that has placed a big bet on AMD, said although many customers aren't necessarily looking for 64-bit systems, the 32-bit performance and compatibility offered by AMD's processors provide a high level of comfort for his customers.

In particular, Cunningham pointed to AMD's HyperTransport and integrated memory technologies as critical enhancements, a sentiment that was echoed by several system builders in the audience.

"A major bottleneck that has historically crippled machines is eliminated," he said.

The sheer performance of AMD64 platforms compelled videogame title developer Ubisoft, represented on the panel here by Monika [stet Monika] Madrid, manager of strategic sales and licensing, to tap AMD as a partner. Under a promotion negotiated by the two companies, certain elite AMD system builders will be able to bundle Ubisoft's combat game , FarCry, with their systems. "This game is definitely a hardware pusher," Madrid said.

The message that perhaps had the loudest resonance, however, was AMD's joint work with Microsoft on two areas: enhanced virus protection and the forthcoming edition of Windows Server 2003 for 64-bit extended systems, which is due to ship later this year. The 64-bit beta spurred more than 20,000 downloads on the first day it was available, AMD's Morrs noted.

On the security side, AMD and Microsoft have disclosed that the Data Execution Prevention feature in the forthcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2 will work in concert with AMD64 processors, including all Operton and Althon 64 processors sold in 2003, to prevent certain viruses, particularly those that cause buffer overruns, from executing.

Mike Morgan, system builder account manager for Microsoft, who also participated in AMD's "talk show," said the only processors that currently can take advantage of this feature are ones from AMD. "Get on board. Get on board, today," Morgan said.

"The more layers of protection you have, the better off you are," said Seth Horen, president of Hi-Tech Consultants, a solution provider based in Milford, Conn., who gave a thumb-up to the security message. Approximately half the systems that Hi-Tech Consultants sells use AMD processors, Horen said.

Robert Schaffer, president of Source Micro, a Randoph, N.J., system builder that currently does very little AMD business, said the security message is compelling. However, he said, AMD needs to do more to drive its message to prospective customers in concert with the custom systems channel.