The last rev of Nehalem engineering samples cut into that access time penalty, and they are continuing to look at adjustments to make additional progress. I have not upgraded to production silicon but expect that to happen soon. Increasing performance on that particular workload apparently impacts other, more common workloads - or so I have been told.
Your point about AMD pricing is interesting - I hadn't thought about it, but it makes sense. I guess the question is whether additional profit in that space would offset a less competitive mainstream position, and that discussion is pretty far out of my area of expertise ;=)
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