mas (mas769@hotmail.com) on 8/30/06 wrote:
---------------------------
[snip]
>
>IBM have gone on record as saying that IPF just did not sell well enough for them,
>those IPF Linux sales being a pittance in the general scheme of things. If they
>were that bothered about commodity boxes selling Linux they wouldn't bother with
>Opterons and Xeons the latter in 32 socket configurations as they are far more a
>threat to Power than IPF. In fact they have gone on record* as saying they price
>their Power boxes compared to Opteron boxes so they are obviously embracing and
>countering commodity competition against Power. Frankly this pet theory of yours
>does not sound any more plausible no matter how many times you repeat it.

Personally, I think it's more amusing to watch him
dig up evidence to support his conspiracy theory
and sit back and laugh than argue about it.

The real truth is that the pseries and xseries brands
hardly talk to each other... if they did, I would surmise
that there never would have been Itanium EXA support for as
long as there was.

I'd also like to point out the fallacy that Since IBM was
#4 in Itanium sales, it must have been very profitable,
I don't recall any evidence to support that claim directly.

It's true that Linux on Power has not sold really well,
but that really has nothing to do with the x455. I
strongly doubt they went head to head in many customer
bids.

Probably the bigger frustration to Power Linux is
the ingrained AIX culture present in pseries, where sales
people are much more inclined to push AIX over Linux to all
but the most stubborn customers, especially in the
commercial space. HPC customers tend to demand Linux
much more vehemently.

While we're talking conspiracy theories, here's one of
my own: Intel cut or trimmed subsidies for the devleopment
version Itanium version of the EXA chipset line :-P