chipguy, your original post #msg-3728117 has to be considered the last refuge of the scared IPF supporter! I think that the Weather Channel is big enough to purchase from different vendors In fact, they would be stupid to depend only on one vendor or architecture.
In a real way, both are newsworthy items - the Opteron win because it is a major commitment to a new architecture, and the IPF win because it is a commitment to a struggling architecture.
Now, let's look at the key statement:
The Weather Channel ... is building on a current strategy of running its IT infrastructure on open source technology and has migrated to Intel® Itanium® 2 processor-based HP Integrity servers from proprietary RISC-based platforms.
Seems to me that they are replacing RISC with IPF, and replacing Xeon with Opteron. Note that they are building on a current strategy, which we already know started with implementing Opteron boxes.
What is the RISC vs. x86 server market size? That is likely to mean they are purchasing a whole lot more Opteron systems!
ASP of IPF servers is high? Big deal... Nobody says big Itanium systems are cheap. Hell, one big SGI box would maintain that ASP against two dozen little freebie web and print servers.
Can you tell us the ASP of individual Itaniums?
Show me a person who bought a 4-way IPF system for 15x the cost of a 4-way Opteron server, and I'll show you a true idiot.
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