[log in to unmask] wrote:
> and at least the small server market. Itanic will be relegated to a niche
> product. Intel won't be able to cross-subsidy Itanic from Yamhill profits
> because of price pressure from Hammer.

Intel has been able to use the slim profits it makes on the 8086s to subsidize
the decade long development of IA64.  There is no reason that it can't
continue to do that. In fact, Intel's financials are probably structures in a
long term ability to subsidize IA64's development without Wall Street really noticing.

> Except I would expect that very few customers will actually want to move from
> their current architectures to Itanic unless they can see a benefit or are
> forced.

While IA64 is definitely a downgrade for Alpha users, what about those on
PA-Risc and MIPS (Tandem) Will that chip not provide an improvement ?

Remember that all that is left on Alpha is VMS whose future has yet to be
announced. Tru64 remains on Alpha anyways, so no migration will occur from
Alpha to IA64 , it is more likely to happen from Alpha to Sparc for those customers.


> I hope that HP is now looking at porting all it's OSs to HAMMER/YAMHILL since
> that is the only way it could possibly obtain the savings you posit for
> Itanium.

Carly has made big time commitments to IA64, including forcing Compaq to
prematurely murder Alpha. I do not think that she will back down, and she will
push ahead full speed. Don't underestimate her.

Even with HP only using IA64, IA64 will have higher sales than Alpha. And
Alpha survived for over a decade. Grated Alpha had the technology to be fast,
whereas Intel still has to find a way to impress folks with IA643's performance.

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