Despite the hiccup Intel announced last month with its flawed Sandy Bridge chipset, code-named Cougar Point, the company has moved toward major new performance improvements throughout its Core lineup and now looks to win over solution provider and system builder partners.
Intel’s Channel Chief Steve Dallman says the chip maker saw disappointing channel sales figures for its Clarkdale year, but with the recent release of the company’s new Sandy Bridge architecture, he expects Intel’s channel partners will turn the corner in 2011.
Meanwhile, rival AMD’s vice president of worldwide channel marketing David Kenyon says system builders are essential to the success of AMD’s Fusion platform in the integrated graphics space, as the world’s second-largest chip maker tries to stage a comeback and regain momentum in the channel.
Which leads to these key points for system builders and solution providers:
- Some believe the combination of more powerful processing, and a stronger economy, will lead to a significant boost for both AMD and Intel platforms;
- Other channel partners of both companies, while optimistic about Sandy Bridge and Fusion, say they are waiting before jump- ing in because they need to hear more specifics from the vendors and see a stronger need by their own customers;
- Even though new form factors—including new tablets—have caused a significant disruption in the market, Intel still has opportunity with itsAtom platform in an industry grappling with new comput- ing models and designs.
Change Comes To Intel
Dallman, Intel’s vice president of sales and marketing group and general manager of Intel’s worldwide reseller channel organisation, spoke to CRN US about the excitement surrounding the release of Intel’s Sandy Bridge integrated graphics platform—which com- bines CPU and GPU capability on a single die— as well as Intel’s partner strategy for its Atom products.
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