Gopher,
>SGI saw Itanium as a way to turn around the company's dwindling fortunes. They spent a fortune developing compilers, debugging tools etc. Little did they know, when throwing their eggs in the basket, that Itanium was to be just a prototype.
It is unfortunate that SGI might just fold before Intel produces a version of Merced for them that they can actually sell.
Other OEMs got detailed roadmap plans about Itanium (Merced, McKinley, Madison, etc.) from Intel that go out five years and more. This included performance, numbers of chips to be produced for the different Itanium types, etc. If SGI didn't get this info, that IBM, Dell, Compaq, IBM and others got, they didn't do there sourcing homework. If you want to say that SGI switched to Itanium before it was known that Merced wasn't going to be a volume product, I say they shouldn't have put all their eggs in one basket. Besides, that info about Merced was pretty commonly known at the OEMs, and even on SI, quite a while ago.
Tony |
