Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[chipguy]

Even with HP pushing Itanium, I just don't see how that architecture will go
up against IBM.

1) IPF isn't going "up against" IBM, it is competing with POWERx in the high end. IBM
itself offers IPF based hardware as you probably know by now.

2) The important thing is that it isn't just HP driving IPF up against POWERx. There is
SGI on the HPC side, and Unisys, NEC and others driving IPF in the commercial area.

So the battle for the big iron is between IBM (Power4+) and HPQ (Itanium). IBM has a much stronger hand here, IMHO.

IBM scores bigger here on the basis on a very expensive system level infrastructure surrounding its CPUs.
Compare the price and price/performance of these systems. Also compare the HP system with other IPF
systems on commercial workloads. It is obvious that HP has a lot of room to improve Superdome. The
POWER4x is an impressive system but achieves it at very high cost that doesn't scale with the silicon. IBM
will be increasingly squeezed into the very high end and this will keep CPU volumes low and costs high.
And, no selling millions of 970s to Apple won't help a bit.