hmaly, Re: What I am talking about is the main reason all of the OEM's supposedly signed up with Intel. Because Intel with it's mass of engineers could easily outdesign, outmanufacture,outproduce them, have cheaper costs through the magic of higher volume. By high volume, I mean high volume compared to the small amount of chips Sun or IBM might use in their systems. You will note I said "relatively speaking"
"Relatively speaking" with regards to RISC, Intel has the "low cost" model and economies of scale. They *can* outdesign, outmanufacture, and outsell any of the RISC competitors on the market, so that's why it only makes sense to position Itanium 2 against these competitors.
On the other hand, you had previously been comparing it to x86, which has had more than a decade of high volume growth and proliferations into the low costs markets. x86 has the advantage, since promoters of the architecture have hit a sort of "sweet spot" in design and efficiency. You can't expect IA-64 to compete in cost right away. It could take years.
I would expect that Intel realizes this, so why would they make it an x86 competitor? Why not make it a RISC competitor, and gain in those markets, first? That's what I think they are doing, BWDIK.
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