AMD Virtualizes Everything

AMD is going to support and encourage the extensive use of virtualization technologies on the small businesses servers and as the company declared, they hope to gain access in the SMBs space in the next 18 months. Barcelona will arrive on the market in the same general period, so AMD's declarations may indicate the fact that they are confident enough in its abilities to push it to the virtualization market.

In order to underline its growing interest in the small businesses market, AMD launched a strategy called "Common Core" aimed at "simplifying systems management" and in contrast with its rival Intel, the AMD company offered its customers a more "stable, consistent roadmap", according to Opteron product manager Steve Demski, who was cited by the news Web site TheRegister. He also said that "We aren't churning through our OEM product lines as quickly as our competitor does. It makes it from a business standpoint easier for them to support their lifecycles so it's more like a three-year longevity".

One of the main things that drove customers away from AMD in the near past was the inconsistent processor socket architecture, which was changing with every new processor generation, forcing users to upgrade their motherboads as well, or at least buy expensive and not readily available socket adapters. This seems to have changed for the better as AMD is now presenting its "same socket infrastructure" especially for customers that do not wish to upgrade more hardware components every time when a new processor hits the market. But AMD is not entirely happy about this situation as Demski pointed out: "One of the drawbacks with this approach is that people tend to look at us as less innovative".

About the recent price and performance war between AMD and Intel, a war many said it was lost from the very beginning, Demski said "We believe that we are delivering just the same level of innovation but we are doing it within an infrastructure that is a little bit more customer friendly".