hmaly, Re: "The trouble with that picture is that the OEMs and INtel won't make any money with small volumes. So unless they can see a payoff, they are likely to say sayonara."
It's lower volume, but higher margin - a very simple concept. I don't know why some people have so hard comprehending it. IBM has been successful, so has Sun, Compaq, and HP, the latter of whom sold their current Alpha and PA-RISC lines to jump on the next low volume, high margin band-wagon. There are many billion dollars worth of revenue, spread out over a mere fraction of the volumes found on the desktop. Intel or the OEMs would be crazy to ignore this market.
Re: "Alpha didn't have the software, just as IA-64. With MSFT and Linux, Hammer should do alright."
I can't speak for the future, but right now, IA-64 has more than 10x the software support that Hammer has, and a better prospect for future development, given the number of currently outstanding commitments. Hammer has the new Windows design win, but developer commitments have yet to happen. It's just a 32-bit chip until it has 64-bit software. No matter how you spin it, Hammer needs 64-bit code to run in 64-bit. That still makes it no better than Itanium.
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