Like Intel, AMD will work with server makers, software developers and potential customers to smooth out kinks in the adoption curve as part of its "Rolling Thunder" campaign to build support for Hammer. The company will create and freely license reference designs for building two-processor Athlon servers and will work with the major Taiwanese manufacturers to deliver boards to market. Regional server manufacturers believe the chips will be a hit with customers. "A lot of people are anxious for the Hammer technology," said Roland Baker, president of Net Express, which makes servers and workstations for universities, chip designers and the number-crunching departments in corporations. A number of the company's customers have recently switched from buying AMD-based servers to Intel-based servers because Intel has dropped prices and increased speeds on its Xeon chips. However, the pendulum will is likely to swing back if Hammer lives up to the promises. "People will have no hesitation about going back to AMD," Baker said. "The price is less, and they want to support the underdog. This is not us promoting it. That is what the customers are telling us." AMD also will collaborate with the major manufacturers to work on their own designs. So far, none have publicly announced that they will produce an AMD-based server for the North American market. Some last year said they had little interest in it. But Ellett said that all of them are testing the chips in their labs. "We have all of the top-tier server manufacturers interested in our products," Ellett said. Landing those deals, though, will be difficult. Most of the major server makers have already invested millions of dollars in creating servers based on their own chips, as well as servers that use Intel's Xeon and Itanium chips. Some European and Japanese manufacturers have used AMD chips for servers but in limited capacities. "The only real issue in my mind is whether AMD will be able to convince HP or IBM or someone else of that ilk to sell them," said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64. "They've got to score some success in the enterprise space or at least the small-business space." The company has won backing from Microsoft for the Hammer chips. Despite the challenges, Brookwood complimented the company on its homework. "They've put a lot of effort into the platform aspect of Hammer as well as the instruction-set architecture," he said. Major manufacturers, moreover, are likely to use the Hammer version of Athlon first, for one- and two-processor servers, and not Opteron, for four- and eight-ways. Still, it will take only one of the major manufacturers to find success in switching to begin generating more widespread interest, McCarron said. Besides, the regional specialists and system integrators, along with the "white box" manufacturers in the developing markets, are growing at the expense of the major brands. "The white-box guys aren't doing any independent R&D," McCarron said.
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