Yesterday, Verizon announced that it building its own cloud computing platform to compete with the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Rather than designing its own hardware, or using readymade big iron setups from someone like IBM, Verizon instead opted for high density SeaMicro servers. AMD, which acquired SeaMicro last year, has been touting this as a huge victory over Intel and its dominance in the server market. AMD has, rather ironically, become an Intel OEM.

According to an industry source with first hand knowledge of Verizon cloud compute implementation, who spoke to ExtremeTech on condition of anonymity, vast majority of the CPUs (more than three quarters) AMD is using for this implementation with Verizon are Intel Richard Rodgers Womens Jersey Xeon E3s using the SeaMicro fabric they acquired. So in essence AMD is now becoming a microserver OEM for Intel and is still largely selling Intel parts in microservers for their customers. Speaking to VentureBeat, manager of AMD server group and founder of SeaMicro, Andrew Feldman, said, using our server infrastructure from soup to nuts. AMD infrastructure (the Freedom Fabric ASIC), yes, but Intel CPUs it would seem. Speaking to ZDNet, Feldman even went as far as saying that the Verizon deal was dream come true. We can only assume that, despite AMD grandiose claims, these blogs didn think to ask Feldman whether these servers were actually AMD powered or not, even though every SeaMicro server built before the AMD acquisition was Intel powered.

Basically, it seems like AMD is trying to make it look like Verizon opted for an Opteron powered SM15000 SeaMicro server, but in actual fact the vast majority of the servers purchased by Verizon are the Intel Xeon E3 powered SM10000. It not that AMD is flat out lying, of course Verizon did buy some Opteron based microservers but, understandably, it trying to keep the conversation entirely about the SM15000, rather than the Xeon powered SM10000.

The bigger story, of course, is about whether AMD can reclaim some of the server market from Intel. Just a few short years ago, with a slew of workstation and supercomputer design wins, it looked like AMD was on course to snap up a significant portion of the lucrative server market with its Opteron chips. Today, following a few generations of CPU cores (Nehalem, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge) that have utterly crushed AMD efforts, Intel share of the server market is back up to around 95%. (Read:Microsoft now has one million servers less than Google, but more than Amazon.)

A complete 10U SeaMicro SM15000 server

SeaMicro, which is an industry leader in the rapidly growing high density/low power microserver market, was a savvy acquisition for AMD but unless the company can produce some CPU cores that can actually compete with Haswell on the high end, or Bay Trail on the low end, it not entirely clear how AMD intends to win back a meaningful portion of the server market from Chipzilla. Maybe we looking at it from the wrong angle, though: Maybe AMD doesn overly care if it ends up being an Intel OEM. By selling SeaMicro servers, AMD gets to deal direct with the big boys, rather than merely providing chips that then go into HP, Dell, and IBM servers and while Intel will certainly make a lot of money from the CPUs, AMD will reap its own hefty profit margins from the sale of each SeaMicro server.

Now read:Deliberate excellence: Why Intel leads the world in semiconductor manufacturing

Tagged InAfter learning how Intel illegally bought off OEMs and was successfully civilly prosecuted for paying off OEMs to not buy AMD CPUs (Google AMD Transmeta vs Intel lawsuit), readers should be aware of their constant attempt to corrupt and sway the media news. Any means necessary to deflect from the fact that within a year, there will be many NON Intel (both X86 64 and ARM64) servers that will be displacing Intel in the market.

This smells like the typical Intel push story from their many shills in the media

You mean, major tech news sites are looking at ARM high density servers as the next big thing. Intel hasn exactly been sitting on its hands, and the power efficiency gap is closing fast (even faster than Intel marketing folks predicted). By the time ARM based models are ready to enter this space at scale, there will no longer be a compelling reason to undergo the expense and hassle of such a disruptive shift. ARM should be more focused on how to retain its dominance of the mobile market rather than trying to compete in servers (which will ultimately lead to it failing in both markets).

INTEL and NVIDIA have the same repeat over and over about AMD. AMD is terrible trust me . I just like straight facts not I have this source I can not name but its real trust me This is not watergate this is just INTEL VS AMD. Interesting but be straight. Shills just get laughed out the industry. I by no means think AMD will dominate anything for a long time or if ever who knows. If we wanted to read about dick riding would not be on this site.

20nm and 14nm apu, cpu and gpu are right upon the horizon. When I step back and take a look at AMD one big thing points itself out to me. It is the underdog. In server market, CPU market, GPU market, it has room for market share. All its competitors took as much as they could. AMD has the biggest upside out of all of them. I in no way think they are great yet or anything of that nature. But the more I think about it the more I believe they will do much Authentic Khyri Thornton Jersey better. Any nerd worth his salt has his ear to the ground in the tech sector and all I hear about is Mantle, xbox, ps4, seamicro, and wII when AMD conversation comes up. With a market cap of about 2.7B. The stock is already undervalued until it shows a profitable quarter which is october 17th. Then the market cap will more than likely push to 5 to 6B. Intel and other competitors have very little upside. I love INTEL cpus and I wish AMD would make a better one. Far as INTEL their stock is worthless if you want to grow your money. Although who knows but what ever happens it will be better for the consumer.

Thinking it is all about the silicon is illogical. It is about money. Intel being bullish that they are the king of the hill will allow AMD to make some money off their silicon thinking it will be good business. Throughout history, the hog always gets slaughter. Long term this is a big win for AMD. They get their brand in the door. At the end of the day the guys who sign the check to do the orders has no clue nor gives a damn what processor is inside. He only knows We used this brand before it worked we shall use it again because change is bad Now his IT guys can shut up and be more productive to make him more money. Brand in house ALWAYS matters more long term than short term. Perspective can mean understanding.