AMD CEO Hector Ruiz welcomed Dell Inc. as the newest member of The Green Grid, a group of companies seeking to reduce power consumption in data centers.

During a keynote speech here kicking off the 2006 World Congress on Information Technology, Ruiz said Dell joins Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and IBM—all of which have used AMD’s Opteron processor for servers which AMD claims consume less power than servers based on Intel processors.

The announcement prompted renewed speculation that Dell may be in the process of creating servers based on the Opteron processors, a reversal of Dell’s current "Intel-only" policy.

Ruiz also issued an invitation to Intel to join the AMD-led “50X15” initiative launched three years ago with a goal of connecting 50 percent of the world’s population to the Internet by 2015.

During a speech here, Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini plans to discuss a similar Intel initiative called the “Discover the PC."

Ruiz said he was glad that Intel “has recognized” the computing needs of the developing world.

At the WCIT event, delegates were offered free Personal Internet Communicators, a $299 AMD-designed system which includes a 56-kbaud modem. The Internet system created for the Discover the PC initiative reportedly is based on wireless connectivity.