This is all a sideshow, however, because Xeon is the target. Any marketing of Opteron that included Itanium comparisons would only be to build and reinforce the perception that Xeon is a has-been.
While it's true that Xeon doesn't beat or match Opteron on many benchmarks, it still does on quite a few and we haven't seen a new Xeon speed bin released in quite some time. I expect newer versions to make a much better showing. Perhaps not closing all the gaps but a substantial improvement is reasonable to expect.
sgolds, Re: Any marketing of Opteron that included Itanium comparisons would only be to build and reinforce the perception that Xeon is a has-been.
Excellent point. You can see that effect even here on this thread, where the Intel folk have pretty much ceded the Xeon, and draw performance comparisons almost exclusively to the yet-to-be-launched next-generation Itanium.
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