[Info-vax] Itanium and the NY antitrust suit against Intel

[JF Mezei]

Neil Rieck wrote:
> Remember that HP
> engineers didn't want to kill PA-RISC because of competition from
> other processors, including Alpha. Then in 2001 while Compaq was in
> merger talks with HP, Compaq kills Alpha and transfers ~ 300 engineers
> to Intel. After the HP-Compaq merger, HP followed through with killing
> off PA-RISC.

Something of note here: not long before June 25 2001, there was another
significant event for IA64: First boot of Windows on an IA64.

This may have been some contractual item "once IA64 can do first boot fo
windows, it means it is close enough to market that you kill your own
chip" clauses that Intel had with both HP and Compaq/Digital.

Remember that Digital had a deal with Intel as part of Digital thanking
Intel for stealing Alpha IP. That deal not only included cool pricing
for 8086s but also porting of Digital Unix to that IA64 contraption.

So it is quite possible that Compaq inherited a contract with clauses
forcing Compaq to kill Alpha within X weeks of first boot of Window on
IA64. Just a theory.


Or LaCarly, after having had some sweet pillow talk with Curly went to
Intel and told them that she doesn't want to be the one to kill Alpha
(anti trust issues) and that she really really really needs Curly to
kill Alpha before they announce the wedding.

If Alpha were stil alive on Sept 7 2001 when Carly's glorious wedding
was announced, questions would have been asked about how she would
rationalise thge platforms, and the feds might be a tad concerned about
the merger resulting in too many cpu platforms being killed. Since Alpha
was killed before the wedding was announced, the feds didn't have to
consider that the merger would result in competing platforms being
eliminated.


The big question is how sweet was the 8086 deal Digital made with Intel.
>From what I heard, Compaq saw that as a big asset because it was better
than the deal it had with Intel. Big question is whether that deal was
still in effect at the time of the HP merger and if it was better than
what HP had with Intel.