John,
What are they trying to force INTC's hand with respect to?
Support of x86-64. I think it is in MSFT's interest not to have the market fragmented. Isn't it the theme of their defense vs. the un-settling states?
What Intel can do for MSFT is to deliver the x86-64 to the remaining 80% of the market.
Also, if x86-(32 or 64) processors continue to move forward in performance at today's rate, they will completely eclipse all the other architectures (Suns, Alpha, IBM Power 4, their mainframes). This is the reason why MSFT doesn't give a damn about Itanium. If x86 can do the job of taking the high end (and bring MSFT there), Itanium support will actually be a burden on MSFT, not an asset. Why support 2 versions, spend more resources, if the second CPU (Itanium) doesn't contribute anything?
If you check out Aces, and their wonderful utility called SpecMine, P4 2.4 GHz just moved ahead of IBM's Power4. And Microsoft is in captain chair of this x86 juggernaut. Why give a damn about Power4, Sparc, PA, Alpha, MIPS, Itanium?
aceshardware.com
aceshardware.com
Joe |
