Originally posted by Catfish_Man
Yup. If the sales numbers were going DOWN it would be over. As it is, they're going up (from what I've read). They're still abysmal, and Intel expects to spend until 2007 just trying to break even on the damn thing, but they're going up. Also, they've finally got something that doesn't perform like crap, so people actually have a reason to port to IA-64. I think Intel is fairly likely to succeed in pushing the chip to some success by brute force, similar to what MS is doing with the XBox. Just keep pouring dollars into it and buying talented engineers for it (the Alpha EV8 team, in this case) until it performs well.
Have you seen some of the sales numbers? IBM sells the machines, but didn't sell any in the first quarter. Dell has entered, left and no reentered the Itanic space and sold 14 in the first quarter. Here's an example, if they sold seven more in the second quarter, it would be a 50% increase in sales. The only one selling in volume is HP. IDC has shown Itanic sinking in terms of Q1 sales.
Once again, performance is not going to sway people. If you could do the same job with your current platform but need a few extra processors, that is far cheaper then porting and testing. Rewriting code of EPIC is a very big undertaking, that won't be cheap or easy. Not to mention the Itanic servers cost more to run. They use considerably more power and generate much more heat. This makes the servers bigger to provide better cooling thus taking up more room, which costs money. The additional heat generated also requires the DC refrigeration units to run more, increasing the amount of power used.
Exactly how successful is the XBOX? It hasn't sold as many as the PS2, and if you look at global sales, they have gotten slaughtered.
Brute force won't work. They can sell the machines cheaper, but if the total bill to get everything ported over, users trained, support personnel trained, as well as all the testing that is required far exceeds the costs of upgrading you current system with more or faster processors, companies won't be looking to switch. All Intel can hope for is that they will use it for new installations. If a company uses Sun SPARC or IBM Power4, the chances of them migrating are pretty slim. If they use the Alpha or PA-RISC, they have a better chance of succeeding.
Juts because they have a good performing chip, doesn't mean that will be the case next year. Sun is readying some much-improved systems and Ti has started fabrication using the .09-micron process. Both of these will increase the performance of Sun systems.
You still haven't addressed that Sun took the crown when they didn't have the best performing processor. They still hold the crown as well.
