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To: Saturn V who wrote (96571)	1/17/2000 6:45:00 PM
From: Tony Viola	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

Saturn V, Which model will Merced based systems follow ? It looks like a combination of both. The old companies IBM,HP,Hitachi are jockeying to develop chipsets and other hardware to differentiate themselves from the expected plain vanilla commodity Merced systems from the likes of Dell etc. Unless IBM,HP etc can offer a dramatic improvement over the plain vanilla Intel chipsets, the commodity marketplace will dominate the high end computers also.If the old mainframe based companies do indeed sink, they will have gone down with all guns firing. The first thing that came to my mind when I read your post was, will a Dell be prepared to handle customer support for very complex machines like 32 way SMPs with new CPU's, new chipsets, new OSs, new compilers, etc. The next thing that came to my mind is an overwhelming NO. Have to be IBM or HP, maybe Hitachi. Dell just doesn't have the experience in that kind of an environment, I don't think. Compaq does. Not only is everything inside the server all new, but they'll be interconnected in complex networks, with SAN's, NAS's, routers, you name it. Actually, Intel, once they get up the customer service curve from their own web hosting/server farm experiences, could be their own best server vendor. This thing is coming full circle. I still think IBM and HP should be in the best shape overall as IA-64 server vendors. Tony

To: Saturn V who wrote (96571)	1/17/2000 7:27:00 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Saturn, you hit the nail right on the head: <Which model will Merced based systems follow ? It looks like a combination of both.> Intel is designing two different commodity platforms for Merced: 1) Lion: 4-way 460GX system, tons of memory and PCI buses 2) Big Sur: 2-way 460GX system, AGP-4x port, single-motherboard construction (w/ three daughtercards) These commodity platforms will be your regular "cookie-cutter" stuff from Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc. In addition, Intel is licensing IA-64 and Merced to the big boys like IBM, HP, NEC, etc., so that they can build proprietary 8-way and higher systems. This way, Intel can leverage the high-end expertise from these companies in driving IA-64 technology into the enterprise. Tenchusatsu