Dan, Re: Itanium was on Pricewatch for months, from multiple vendors, and was its own listed category. Now it's gone.
I remember a single vendor selling Itanium, and I don't even think it was Itanium 2. Like I said, vendors sometimes dump inventory into the channel. As usual, you are making assertions with nothing to back it up. It's just your word against everyone else's.
As for the RISC market, it looks like I was wrong about that. I have seen several sources that indicate that it has shrunk over the past several years.
Re: I think Intel has been scared by Opteron, and you will see Intel running at high speed away from their "enterprise only for the next 5 years" strategy for 64-bit computing.
If Intel executives are not scared of Opteron, then they should be fired. I agree that it poses the most serious threat to Intel's business than they've had in the last 5 years, at least. Because of this, "running away at high speeds" is the last thing I expect them to do. Usually, when push comes to shove, and billions of dollars are on the line, I would expect Intel to compete vigorously for their market share. But despite what you believe, I think they will do this legally and without abusing a monopoly status. Intel's 64-bit solution will need a lot more cash poured into it before it's self-sustainable, simply due to the current cost barriers. If Intel wants Itanium to go against Opteron in the mainstream market, they will need several more years of infrastructure and ecosystem advancement. In the mean time, I think they will continue Xeon development and use Itanium 2 to soak up the high end revenue opportunities. After that, when 64-bits becomes a necessity, they had better have a mainstream worthy version of Itanium, or a 64-bit enhanced Xeon as a backup. That's still several years away, though, IMO.
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