Dell Switches to AMD Chips

Texas’ Dell Inc. will switch to Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s Opteron chip in multiprocessor servers by year-end.

News of the switch from Intel Corp. chips hoisted AMD shares 14 percent in overnight trading, the Financial Times reported Friday.

Three years ago AMD broke away from Intel’s shadow by introducing Opteron, a server chip that ran in the enhanced 64-bit mode needed by many corporate customers but could also run in the more standard 32-bit mode.

Since then Opteron sales have increased to account for about 20 percent of server chips sold, said Nathan Brookwood, of Insight 64.

Many observers have long regarded Opteron as superior to Xeon.