AMD Challenges Intel On Power Consumption

AUSTIN, Texas — Advanced Micro Devices is turning up the heat on rival Intel by turning down the power.

AMD CEO Hector Ruiz welcomed Dell Inc. as the newest member of The Green Grid, a group of companies seeking to reduce power consumption in data centers.

During a keynote speech here kicking off the 2006 World Congress on Information Technology, Ruiz said Dell joins Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and IBM—all of which have used AMD’s Opteron processor for servers which AMD claims consume less power than servers based on Intel processors.

The announcement prompted renewed speculation that Dell may be in the process of creating servers based on the Opteron processors, a reversal of Dell’s current "Intel-only" policy.

Ruiz also issued an invitation to Intel to join the AMD-led “50X15” initiative launched three years ago with a goal of connecting 50 percent of the world’s population to the Internet by 2015.