Re: ...staying the INTEL course... and quite a bit of denial.
You're talking 6 in one hand, half dozen in the other. Once Bensley launches, Intel servers will not have a performance disadvantage, and once NGA launches, Intel will have both a performance and power advantage. It makes sense for the OEMs to "stay the Intel course" if the environment will change so drastically over the course of the year.
As for MP, Tulsa will launch this year and come with performance advantages, and IBM should make good use of it with their x3 architecture. Then most of the other issues will be resolved with the NGA MP platform gets launched in mid-07.