[Info-vax] Dvorak on Itanic

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Jan 28, 3:57 pm, "John Smith \(not the one @ HP\)"
<a... at nonymous.com> wrote:
> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2339629,00.asp
>
> Just pointing out the article

A slightly odd article. Comments on the site have already pointed out
that Dvorak seems to confuse correlation with causation, but as yet no
one seems to have pointed out one obvious but unmentioned factor - the
Digital/Intel patent fight back in 1997, when DEC alleged that Intel's
Pentium illegally used various DEC-patented technologies [0].

Just prior to the settlement, "informed sources" (well, former PA-RISC
engineer Linley Gwennap) were speculating that IA64 would replace
Alpha [1].

Once details of the settlement [2] emerged in 1997, it included terms
such as "Digital will develop systems based on Intel's IA-64
architecture ... Digital will port its Digital Unix operating system
to Intel's IA-64".

Despite that, Dvorak's assertion that "The entire industry just took
Intel at its word that Itanium would work as advertised in a
PowerPoint presentation" is not really justified - DEC's Alpha folks
carried on pointing out that IA64 was technically going nowhere vs
Alpha, eg in this 1999 whitepaper [3].

The best technology doesn't necessarily win though, especially when on-
the-quiet management deals are actually determining where much
technology business is going.

[0] http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E3D61F39F937A25756C0A961958260
[1] http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-204478.html
[2] http://news.cnet.com/FTC-approves-Digital-Intel-deal/2100-1023_3-210495.html
[3] http://web.archive.org/web/20010602154126/www.alphapowered.com/presentations/alpha_ia64.pdf