Dell Finds a Friend

Updated from 8:17 a.m. EDT

Bowing to market pressure, Dell(DELL Quote) said it will start offering processors by Advanced Micro Devices(AMD Quote) as the company's profits fell 11% in the first quarter.

The Round Rock, Texas-based company said Thursday that it will offer servers featuring the AMD Opteron processor by the end of the year, in addition to servers running Intel(INTC Quote) chips. Dell's practice of selling machines featuring only Intel processors has been cited as one of the reasons for the company's recent struggles.

Samir Bhavnani, director of research at Current Analysis, said the move should make Dell more competitive. But he said the news is particularly important for AMD. ...