Why would IT buy an IPF machine to get a 25% benefit for 1 or 2 applications and another Linux x86 machine for everything else, when they could buy one Opteron machine to cover everything with general great performance and save money and resources at the same time?
Perhaps the engineering group has 8 or 16 CPU IPF servers from HP or SGI to run large sims and physical verification and they want workstations capable of using the exact same applications.