[Info-vax] Itanic is a dead end : IBM

[JF Mezei]

John Smith (not the one @ HP) wrote:
> http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/processors/229700037?cid=nl_IW_daily_2011-05-26_html


Going to that page gave me a pop up ad from... HP !!!


My gut has been telling me that HP was slowly moving out of the
proprietary server business for some time. And so far, I have not seen
anything to change my mind. Such a move isn't overnight, of course.

At the end of the day, if all IA64 is getting is a shrink and adding
more cores, then the per core performance won't really improve that much
compared to the rest of the industry.

In less than a month will mark the 10th anniversary of the murder of the
perfectly good platform: Alpha.


Perhaps HP was planning on killing IA64 on June 25 2011, but with that
article, HP is more likely to prove the press wrong and instead announce
some extended contract for more IA64 development.

IA64 is like a zit on HP's face. The quicker it can get rid of it, the
quicker it can move on.  HP might be able to do wonderful things at the
enterprise server level with 8086s that would rival what IB and Sun can do.

But right now, 8086 server are prevented from from fully exploiting
their full potential at HP because HP wants to keep a small niche for
that IA64 thing.


In related news, it appears that the Facebook generation doesn't use
printers much anymore, and this may be more important to HP than IA64.
And it could force HP to rethink its server business and decide to
re-invest in software/hardeware for enterprise servers if the profits
from ink will wither away.