WBMW, from Krewell's article, well, first, thanks for bringing it in:
Although that claim
is technically correct, what major OEM would actually
design and build a server using SledgeHammer? And,
perhaps more important, are any AMD customers asking
AMD to build SledgeHammer?
A quick review of the top five server OEMs, which
(according to Dataquest) have 70% of the server
market, does not provide a promising candidate. Compaq
has already committed to Itanium, having killed the
future Alpha EV-8. Compaq may shortly merge with HP,
and HP co-developed the Itanium architecture, making
it very unlikely that HP, or a merged HP-Compaq, would
choose SledgeHammer. IBM already has the excellent
Power4 and has support for Itanium, giving it no
incentive to add another 64-bit architecture. Dell has
yet to field any non-Intel solution. Sun is committed
to the UltraSPARC architecture but will sell Linux
boxes using x86 processors. To avoid competing with
Sun's own high-end servers, Sun's Linux boxes will
likely be limited to one- and two-processor solutions
and be very cost sensitive. Those boxes offer a good
opportunity for Athlon MP and ClawHammer. SledgeHammer
systems larger than dual-processor systems would be
too threatening to the UltraSPARC interests at Sun.
Has Krewell been reading SI? One thing he did miss was IBM's excellent work around the new Foster Xeon server chips.
So the top five server vendors have 70% of the market. Throw in the next 5, probably Unisys, Fujitsu-Siemens, Hitachi, SGI, NEC (+/-)..., who are all Intel, and not much is left for those tier n companies the AMD boys are so excited about.
Tony |
