Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[jhalada]

mmoy,

It's a bit surprising that they couldn't engineer a sale to
a bigger player.

A potential acquirer would have to be someone who wants to become stronger in this field, which would limit the choices to HP, IBM and potentially Dell. HP already has plenty of its own investment in Itanium, IBM is out of Itanium business and Dell does not seem to have appetite to get in. So th universe of potential buyers is extremely small to non-existent.

Not sure who'd be in the market for something
like this but they'd be attractive just for the Itanium expertise
to one of the companies spending the $10 billion.

Nobody is "spending" $10 billion. There was a pledge to spend that much. SGI probably accounted a goo chunk of that pledge, which they will most likely not be able to honor.

Joe