Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[wbmw]

UND, Re: On Itanium, the problem I see with Itanium is the small installation base. This makes software releases more expensive and later. If you're offering a database for Opteron it has to be priced to compete against all the other database vendors, including the Open Source ones (on these the price must obviously be based on total operational cost). In fact, if a 64-bit application vendor expects to reap windfall profits from users that have Opteron, they'll see instead that a significant portion of those users will simply revert to 32-bit operation and 32-bit prices until the vendors come to their senses. Whereas if you buy an Itanium, you're stuck with what you're offered. And with only Intel being able to afford the compiler technology, that doesn't seem to be about to change.

All the major databases have been ported to IPF (Oracle, SQL, DB2, SyBase, and others). How many have been ported to IA32E? It seems to me that customers looking for 64-bit enterprise apps are much more likely to find them for IPF.