morrowinder,
Thats fine but there are other Itanium systems than Dell.
Because Dell is on the level playing field with Opteron vendors. Their R&D budgets are small and can sell with low margins. Using Intel Itanium chipsets (that Opteron outperforms) is the only way for Dell and Tier-2s to be in same zip code (not exactly the same ballpark) as Opteron on pricing.
HP/SGI have the lions share.
But they have spent millions on R&D, they designed their own chipsets, have them fabbed somewhere. These costs have to be recouped. and they can't be recouped while selling at Dell level of prices.
Joe