Dell on Thursday confirmed the long-rumored news that it will break with its Intel-only policy and begin shipping servers with Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron processors later this year.

Dell and AMD danced around a pending relationship for more than a year, with executives from both companies always providing the same answer that they "continue to talk and evaluate options."

But Dell's eventual use of AMD processors has seemed inevitable as AMD has steadily gained market share over the past two years, particularly in the server market, and Dell has more recently struggled to meet earnings expectations.

In its first quarter financial release on Thursday, Dell acknowledged it will launch "new ninth-generation servers featuring Intel's Woodcrest microprocessors. Dell will also introduce new AMD Opteron processors in our multi-processor servers by the end of the year, offering a great new technology to our customers at the high end of our server line."

Rumors of a pending Dell-AMD partnership have increased steadily over the past year. Last November, Dell surprised many by selling standalone AMD processors on its Web site, and earlier this month Dell joined the AMD-led The Green Grid consortium, a group working to improve data center energy efficiency that includes Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun Microsystems--all providers of systems based on AMD processors.