Love the “Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown” quote by Nathan Brookwood in CNET about the Dell / AMD relationship. It always seems so close, and then it slips away. Intel always holds the relationship.
Nathan may be right in saying last year it came the closest ever because of Intel’s slips in so many areas. But instead of running with the ball, AMD fumbled by assuming they could rely solely on their 64-bit advantage for the sale. That isn’t enough I was told. One exec who’s negotiated agreements with Intel and AMD and companies like Dell told me that AMD needs to get “the whiphand” on Intel in some way to get the Dell close. AMD doesn’t have that whiphand. And I know why. It came up chatting with an editor who wanted to know the background on Intel’s preannounced new product. You see, he knew I’d been there, so he wanted the story again. So here it is…