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Spokeshave, Re: would hazard a guess that all of the examples you listed shipped more than thousands of units in the first year. I am fairly confident that Alpha, PowerPC and x86 (I assume that you mean the 8086) all shipped hundreds of thousands or even millions in the case of PowerPC and 8086 in the first year.

I'm not interested in your SWAG. In fact, I am sure you are dead wrong - at least regarding the 8086. Intel launched the 8086 in 1978, even before the first personal computer was launched in 1981. Only in 1982, 8 months after the IBM PC was on the market, did volumes reach 50,000 units. Itanium 2 was launched one year after Itanium, and volumes will probably be at least that much this year.

Looks like you are right about PowerPC, though. That shipped its millionth system in about a year. It was a bad example on my part, since PowerPC worked so well with existing software, while Itanium architecture does not. Meanwhile, I couldn't find any information on the Alpha CPU, but Alpha never had an established market to enter, like the PowerPC did with Macintosh. I wouldn't expect volumes in the first year to exceed more than several thousand. Even in the years to follow, DEC and Compaq never had more than a sliver of the server market with Alpha. They always positioned Alpha as a high end market niche, much like Itanium 2, though I expect Itanium 2 to become larger than most people think.

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