Dan, Re: "Try adding the prices of Xeon and Athlon MP systems to that comparison and you'll see why HP threw in the towel on PA-RISC and Compaq did the same with Alpha."
There are growing numbers of customers that see the value in commodity servers. It's a market that will certainly grow faster than the RISC market, as well. However, despite the huge price/performance advantages of x86, RISC has failed to die off for many years. The reason for that is the established infrastructure, and the perception that it's technically better. In the long run, we may see these markets completely turn over to the commodity microprocessor market, but I still think that is a ways off (not in this decade). IA-64 gives those RISC based customers a much better price/performance solution, while maintaining the strict infrastructure support. That's why it's meaningful to the industry, and that's why it won't fail - at least in the short term. Later on, Intel will eventually have to proliferate IA-64 to more commodity markets, although I'm sure they will be able to keep a significant premium over x86 that whole time. As an Intel investor, seeing Intel move towards higher margin markets is comforting, especially with the trends of x86. As an AMD investor, you ought to be viewing your own clouds, as pricewars and further commodity pricing will drag both AMD and INTC earnings down the toilet, unless something drastic can happen to the industry to justify much higher margins. At least in the short term (next ~5 years), Intel has IA-64, which will demand much higher margins for the markets it is going into. AMD's 64-bit processor simply brings 64-bit capability to a market that becoming more and more commoditized, anyway. Other than having yet another competitive marketing bullet, what's the point?
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