Price Talk Envelops AMD Opteron

The reports, which came out last week, said Sunnyvale-based AMD was leaking hints that its initial Opteron chips will be priced between $3,000 and $6,000. AMD officials declined to discuss the reports but suggested that they were inaccurate.

"From my understanding, AMD has not set the pricing yet, but when the product launches in the [first half of next year, AMD pricing will be competitive vs. the competition's product offerings," said David Chang, president of Agama Systems, a white-box builder based in Houston.

Despite backing away from the $3,000-to-$6,000 price range cited in the reports, an AMD spokeswoman last week reiter-ated that the company would make its Opteron processors "competitive" and that it is in pricing negotiations with OEMs.

AMD rival Intel, which has had its 64-bit Itanium processor platform available for nearly two years, lists its current Itanium 2 chips as priced between $1,338 and $4,226. But some industry observers said AMD will have an advantage when the Opterons ship because the processors are slated to be tuned so they can run both 64-bit and 32-bit applications smoothly. Intel's Itanium isn't optimized for 32-bit applications, but company executives have said they never targeted the platform for 32-bit processing because the market hasn't called for it.

In monthly CRN surveys last summer, only a fraction of solution providers polled had plans to sell Intel Itanium-based or AMD Hammer-based solutions over the next year. However, Chang said his customers are showing increased interest in AMD's 64-bit technology.

"There have been many inquiries about Opteron," Chang said. "I feel that it will be very successful for AMD in the commercial market and will help them increase their market share."