snip
Either Intel finds a way for Dell to sell Itanium systems that is
profitable for Dell, or that's it for Itanium, but don't underestimate
Dell/Intel. The incentive for Dell, other than being obedient to
Santa Clara, is that it wants to be in the higher margin businesses
just like everybody else does.
They can enter those higher margin businesses with the X86-64 from
Intel, whatever the code name is.
Opteron hasn't yet and may not ever penetrate much beyond the 2 and
4-way space. That's the next line of defense. If Dell as a volume
purveyor of bigger SMP boxes is the way it goes down, Dell will wind
up killing margin rather than capturing it, as it always does.
Go to your strength. Dell's is having the most efficient, lowest cost,
most turns, lowest inventory manufacturing. That allows them to compete
on price. Near as I can tell, not much added value functionality in a
Dell. As opposed to a Del.
In a commodity type market that is a great advantage.
Intel manages to establish Itanium as the worthy competitor to Power
it wants it to be, Dell creates the value proposition for itanium, and
all hell breaks loose again. Or not.
One indicator will be market penetration by Opteron in the 8-way space
and higher, and how Intel reacts. x86 is already getting hardware
virtualization. If x86 starts to acquire the RAS features Intel now
intends only for Itanium, we will know that Itanium is dead.
Have you reviewed the "Hurricane" chip set stuff from IBM? Lots of RAS
and it uses X86-64.
The alternatives are: use x86 for mainframe applications (politically
unacceptable, IMHO), continue investing in Sparc, or become dependent
on IBM.
HP is investing in Sparc? Or is that what is in a nonstop box?
