someone (someone@somewhere.com) on 11/20/10 wrote:
---------------------------
>Linus Torvalds (torvalds@linux-foundation.org) on 11/19/10 wrote:
>---------------------------
>>someone (someone@somewhere.com) on 11/19/10 wrote:
>>>
>>>I wonder how unbiased you really can be on this issue.
>>
>>Nobody is ever really unbiased. Sure, I have my biases,
>>and I'm sure that working for years on an in-order VLIW
>>made me more aware of some of the issues than other people
>>may be.
>>
>>But psycho-analyzing my reasons for detesting Itanium is
>>kind of pointless, when the rest of the industry detests
>>it too these days.
>
>By "the rest of the industry" you clearly must mean Itanium
>competitors because when it comes to customers more than
>80 of the world's 100 largest corporations have bought and
>deployed IPF systems. That doesn't sound like detest to me.
>
>"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes,
>our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot
>alter the state of facts and evidence." - John Adams

The large corporations don't care one way or another about IPF or any other ISA. They buy IPF machines for one of three reasons: the corporate "decision makers" are fools who buy whatever their vendors recommend and HP is their biggest vendor, it's cheaper than porting some particular application(s) to a less expensive or higer performing platform, or they need the unique RAS features of Nonstop OS.

And that bring up another question: are the RAS features of Nonstop unique? Does zOS match or exceed them?