savantu (savantu@email.ro) on 2/5/09 wrote:
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>Let's take another POV : does Tukwilla really need to beat Nehalem and X86 in general ?
>
>I'd say the answer is clearly no.In fact Tukwilla needs to equal Power and handily beat Sparc ( which will happen ).
>Intel can happily push Tukwilla as a direct competitor to other high end server/mainframe
>architectures while using Nehalem as a hammer to squeeze RISC/mainframes from above and below.


For the highest end of the server market you are right. But Itanium left the workstation market, then left the low end server market, then it left the HPC market (or rather was left by the market - who would buy it now versus the x86 alternatives unless Intel essentially gives it away for free for marketing value?)

Now improved virtualization and clustering of virtual servers in the x86 world shrinks the market for high-RAS servers, and the PA-RISC upgrade cycle is just about complete so IPF's main growth conduit is petering out.

Sure, it will beat Sparc, though Rock is different enough it will probably have its niche where it beats Tukwila handily, but those in the market for high-RAS servers won't be buying version 1.0 of Rock anyway. I'm skeptical Tukwila can equal POWER, but let's say it does. Its still a matter of IBM shops will buy POWER, HP shops will buy IPF, and both will be slowly but continually bleeding customers to x86 with each upgrade cycle.

Delay after delay only hurts Tukwila, and I think its a fantasy to believe that Poulsen will hit 2010 given Intel's record with IPF schedules, and the fact that if it did Tukwila would have a pretty short life....even if they really will get Poulsen out on time they might not want to make it known, lest people hold off on upgrades during the down economy to wait for Poulsen!