Like a big blue knight, IBM has come to AMD's rescue once again. The company today revealed plans to ship five new Opteron-based servers. This odd shift in strategy comes just as Intel has released Xeon server chips that best Opteron on many fronts.

In April of 2003, IBM was the lone Tier 1 server vendor brave enough to back AMD's then fledgling Opteron chip. IBM's Opteron support provided AMD with invaluable street cred during a challenging period for the chipmaker.

After a couple of months, however, IBM's support looked more and more like a publicity stunt. IBM had released a single system aimed at the high performance computing market. Meanwhile, Sun Microsystems and HP had started work on broad Opteron-based server lines. And, in fact, it has been the likes of HP, Sun and Rackable Systems that have benefitted most from Opteron's market share surge over the past three years.

IBM proved reluctant to embrace Opteron in a major way due to its investment in the X3 chipset for its Xeon-based systems. Executives often said that IBM's X3 made up for Xeon's technical flaws and put the chip on even ground with Opteron. Behind the scenes, rumors swirled that Intel had convinced IBM to drop its development of Opteron-based blades and a four-socket box in exchange for some large co-marketing arrangements.

Well, the X3 infatuation has ended with IBM's release of the x3455, x3655, x3755, LS21 and LS41 servers. All of the new systems are centered around AMD's upcoming Rev F versions of Opteron.

News source: The Register