AMD takes big hit on Opteron sales

DATA FROM Jon Peddie Research said that Intel has turned round the loss of Xeon sales to Opterons in the first quarter of this year.

AMD's presence in workstations "plummeted" in Q1 of this year, the research indicated, while the workstation market itself continues to remain strong.

The report said that Opteron was "steadily draining share from Intel's Xeon" and that peaked at 13 per cent of the dual socket market in Q2 2006.

But that peak was the start of a fall, and in Q1 2007 AMD's share of the dual socket capable segment fell by over 50 per cent, compared to the same quarter in 2006.

Chip	Q305	Q405	Q106	Q206	Q306	Q406	Q107
Xeon	93.4%	90.9%	87.6%	86.7%	89.1%	88.9%	92.0%
Opteron	6.6%	9.1%	12.4%	13.3%	10.9%	11.1%	8.0%

The figures, said JPR, are for the Intel Xeon versus the AMD Opteron for dual socket Windows workstations.

Report author Alex Herrera said: "The extent of Intel's rebound will put that much more pressure on AMD deliver quad core Barcelona soon - and with better performance than Xeon." µ

L'INQ
Jon Peddie Research