Iria

A report from financial analyst Mark Edelstone of Morgan Stanley suggests that Google, long known for their cozy relationship with Intel, has switched to AMD Opteron processors for its servers.

"We believe that Google has started to buy AMD Opteron processors for nearly all of their new server purchases. We believe that Google currently has an installed base of more than 200,000 servers, and we believe that they will help AMD to enjoy a significant sequential increase in their server business in the first quarter," he wrote.

The reason for the switch is not raw computing power, but energy efficiency. Edelstone writes that the new industry buzzword of "performance per watt" is what drove the purchasing win for AMD. This is somewhat ironic given Intel's recent emphasis on performance per watt, albeit primarily for their laptop line of Core Solo and Core Duo processors.
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Read More / Source: Ars Technica