Elmer,
re: My guess is that SUN will have to make a decision before Hammer proves itself to be manufacturable and able to compete on performance.
It's going to be very difficult for Sun to manage the change from a verticle server company. The priorities are so different, when they have to compete with industry standard hardware, regardless if they are Intel or AMD. I don't know if Solaris has enough added value to make Sun more than just another server manufacturer. And SPARC actually substracts value, so I agree their only option is to go with industry standard hardware.
A really difficult transition.
Looks like the MSFT lawyers will have a really good weekend celebration.
John