AMD goes stable

AMD is entering the medium to large business space with the launch of a commercial stable image platform program. After years of strong market share in the consumer and small business space, its addressing corporate demand for stable disk image platforms overa an extended period of time.
According to Dean McCarron of Mercury Research, companies are pushing for easier configuration and improved manageability of systems using a base platform.
“Intel has had something like this for a number of years but AMD didn’t have a requirement for it since most of its clientele were consumer oriented,” said McCarron. “But as AMD has grown and made significant inroads into the corporate market, it’s probably the next place they’ll develop,” he said.
Patrick Moorhead, AMD vice-president global channel marketing, also noted the company’s ability for growth on the commercial side.
“For the first time AMD is offering an unmet need out there in the marketplace, and that is essentially an image stability solution for 15 months,” he said.
The CSIP program ensures that through the combination of motherboard, chipset, and graphics providers, a stable solution will be available to custom system builders.
But using third party suppliers may work against AMD, said McCarron. “It’s a double-edged sword because introducing another supplier into the mix does create the potential for having something change and that stable image to not work,” he added.
Despite using multiple partners, McCarron said, AMD does offer original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) more flexibility in who they want to use for each component of the program. “Intel only offers that (stable platform) with Intel chipsets,” he added.
One of the key elements of AMD’s CSIP program is the Radeon Xpress 200 integrated graphics chipset from ATI Technologies Inc.
It is the core to managing the communication between the processor, the memory and PCI express activities, said Nympha Lee, ATI product marketing manager.
“For system builders, CSIP will be beneficial from a time to market perspective, the fact that system builders can easily and quickly deploy these systems, allowing them to reduce the qualification and testing time,” said Lee.
A partnership of this scale also allows ATI to nurture its relationship with OEMs and channel market, according to Lee. “It really has given us the opportunity to propel the Radeon Xpress 200 into the commercial landscape,” she added.
AMD is also relying on channel partners to push its CSIP program forward. “It’s a big deal for us and the channel.
“While we have a robust small business and home consumer play in the channel, we don’t have a big play in the desktop and commercial space, so as it relates to channel, we’re entering a new businesses here,” said Moorhead.