Intel Itanium

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 05:08:36AM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
>   Here's an anonymous post from approximately 5 years ago with a cynical
> take on Itanium...
> 
> 
> Is Microsoft responsible for Intel's Itanic disaster?
> Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 21 2006 @ 04:12 PM EST
> There was no Itanic disaster.
> 
> Remember, when Intel started the Itanium bluff, they hand zero presence
> in 64-bit computing and very limited presence in high-end computing.
> Leading 64-bit players were MIPS/SGI, Alpha/Dec, PA-RISC/HP, and yes,
> IBM and Sparc.
> 
> In fear of Itanium, SGI spun-off MIPS and became a Wintel reseller.
> Compaq feared Itanium would quickly kill DEC's Alpha and gave it to
> Intel when they bought DEC. HP redirected their hardware resources away
> from PA-RISC to their intel/itanium partnership.
> 
> Without laying out a single transistor, Itanium completely destroyed 3
> of the 5 64-bit competitors; and Intel went from being a PC desktop
> brand to a wall-street-recognised leader in high-end computing.
> 
> Never was there a more successful bluff in business. I don't see how
> people can consider that a failure.

If it wasn't for AMD making x86_64, intel would have been in a lot of
trouble now.  intel really did think the itanium would work and that
they could get rid of x86 (and hence amd and via and such) in the high
end server market where the nice profits are to be found.

So yes they destroyed 3 of the 5 64bit platforms, but intel didn't
have one themselves, so what good was it for them if the itanium didn't
work out?

-- 
Len Sorensen
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