savantu (savantu@email.ro) on 2/6/09 wrote:
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>Linus, you're talking about market segments worth billions of $ where x86 isn't
>present. If the Special Olympics is worth $20B per year and Intel manages to get
>IPF to a 40-50% share in the next 5 years, was it worth it ? They're currently at around 25%.
>If Intel gets 20% of the system price,we're still talking around $1.5-2B per year,
>out of which 75% if profit since IPF doesn't pay for the FABs.What are the developing
>costs for IPF ? $400-500m a year ? I doubt they are higher.
>
>IPF is in theory economically sound.It simply needs time to get its foot firmly in the door.
>IBM once sold IPF systems.Sales ( systems) were so good, that they were close to
>HPs ( the irony ) and a threat to Power. Out of the blue ( pardon the pun ) IBM
>decides to axe IPF systems.Was it because it questioned to whole point of IBM's in house processor effort ?
>As the situation of IBM microelectronics gradually worsens it's not unquestionable
>to think of a future where mainframe CPUs and ASICs are outsourced ( the new Abu
>Dhabi-AMD foundry, TSMC ) while Power faces the same fate or it is axed. IIRC ,
>there were rumors of Power7 being socket compatible with Opteron.
>The same applies for SPARC. Both SUNs and Fujitsu in house processor programs are
>under pressure.Rock is make or break for SUN while Fujitsu will probably converge
>Primepower with Primequest in the future, porting Solaris to IPF.
>

i find it pretty funny that this argument is used over and over again as some kind of justification for Itanium. systems with itanium may well bring billions in revenue, but among other things it means little wrt profitability of Itanium for Intel. Arguing that way is either total missing of the big picture, or just refusal to face it.

aside from profitability, consider a few simple questions:

1. what part of demand for those systems has got something to do with instruction set?
2. how having one architecture and sharing cores among server and desktop chips would affect costs at Intel?
3. how having a core which is faster on server workloads would affect competitive aspect for Intel and Itanium system builders?

have a nice time pondering.

PS where is Paul DeMone, by the way? Linus vs Paul debates is what I used to read RWT forum for, they were just too good to miss.