> Dell has historically been a completely Intel shop
Because Intel paid Dell and others to not use AMD[0][1]. Dell officially ended their Intel exclusivity 13 years ago when they agreed to sell servers with Opterons[2].
To put some perspective on this, Intel's Marketing, general and administrative costs in 2018 were 6.7 billion[0] whereas AMD's net revenue was 6.4 billion[1].
I'm reminded of that any time I see cheap products with slick marketing (mostly fast food) - you have to assume they're cutting corners in their actual product to pay for all that graphic design and video editing.
Or their revenue and income are so massive that taking a bit from it for advertising is a drop in the bucket. Intel has revenue of nearly 71 billion/year vs AMD at 6.5 billion.
That may be true, but despite that they still cut corners. See Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities and the impact to the performance of Intel CPUs once mitigated. In fact, Intel recommended disabling HyperThreading if you want to be completely protected from the vulnerabilities.
Sort of. Maybe. But as an moderately large Intel customer, I assure you they are very afraid of any accusations of unfair practices or anti-trust behavior, so they are somewhat crippled in their ability to fight with money.
It was clear while Dell ended its exclusivity with Intel, it was still an Intel shop. They continue to push Intel machines across all front, offering AMD merely as a checkbox to avoid any anti competitive or legal problems.
HPE on the other hand tends to be a little more supportive.
And I could only guess there are lots of push from Intel to ask their customer not to offer any AMD machines.
I remember how bizarre that was at the time: Dell had stuck exclusive to Intel through the whole NetBurst era, despite AMD being superior. And then once Core 2 came out and Intel was back on top, Dell started selling AMD.
Big discounts, kickbacks, "deals" and "programs" are being deployed and more on the way.