Phil (phil@phil.com) on 2/6/09 wrote:
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>lubemark (lubemark@davide.it) on 2/6/09 wrote:
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>>Phil (phdny@mac.com) on 2/6/09 wrote:
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>>>David Kanter (dkanter@realworldtech.com) on 2/5/09 wrote:
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>>>>Paul (no@thanks.com) on 2/5/09 wrote:
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>>>>>Temp (not@this.time) on 2/5/09 wrote:
>>>>>---------------------------
>>>>>>"Itanium sales are roughly comparable to Xeon MP volumes." could mean so many things.
>>>>>>One could be comparing CPU unit sales, CPU dollars sales (before or after rebates),
>>>>>>or even server sales based on those CPU product lines. Roughly comparable could
>>>>>>means anything from being equal, to being on the same order of magnitude - not
>>>>differing more than by a factor of 10.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>David could surely comment and clarify.
>>>>>
>>>>>Or it could mean that the volumes are the same, Xeon MP is much lower volume than
>>>>>DP (or whatever they call dual socket capable Xeons these >days).
>>>>
>>>>I was being purposefully vague with that statement, but I really meant CPU shipments.
>>>>
>>>>My sense is that IPF and Xeon MP shipments are within a factor of 2-3.
>>>>
>>>>I believe that Xeon MP is around 2M/year, IPF is probably close to 1M.
>>>
>>>David-Get an account with IDC because you need to check your facts. Based on IDC's
>>>latest server tracker data, for Q1-Q3 2008, 40,366 Itanium servers shipped (166,623
>>>Itanium CPUs). Clearly a bit off from 1M unless you are accounting for unsold chips
>>>and systems. 153,542 4-socket Xeon/EM64T servers (611,469 Xeon/EM64T Chips) shipped
>>during same period. Thats 15x delta!
>>>
>>phil math is not an opininion : where is the 15X delta ?using your own numbers
>>153,542/40,366 = 3,5 and 611,469/166,623 = 3,8....
>>>>
>>>>David
>>>
>>
>Apologies-good catch-my bad. I did 611,469 / 40,366 instead of 611,469 / 166,623 . The ratio should be 3.67x.
>
>What I also noticed looking further into the IDC #'s is that over 80% of Itanium
>servers sold appear to be 2 & 4-socket systems. hmmm..
>
>As for why/how an avg 3.98 CPU's per 4-socket Xeon system sold, good question to
>ask IDC.. Probably due to way vendors provide data to IDC and so its not completely accurate..

Maybe buying a 4S with 2 CPU's to allow future upgrades is less common now than in the past? Seems to me like a stupid and expensive thing to do - if you know you'll need 4 processors in the future, may as well buy them now. If you don't know whether or not you'll need additional procesors, it will cost less to buy a (much) cheaper 2S server, and replace it with a faster 2S server in couple years.

Also there are 8S, 16S, and 32S systems out there whose sales boost the average, and compensate for systems with fewer than the max number of CPU's.