[Info-vax] Comment on the future of OpenVMS

[JF Mezei]

Christopher wrote:

> Which, of course, assumes that they are either willing to or have
> ported HP-UX to x64.  I have doubts about their desire to spend the
> money and/or time on that.

If the 8086 consistently surpasses IA64's performance because the
equivalent IA64 generation is 1.5 years behind or more, then there comes
a point where sales of IA64 hardware will go down because they won't be
competitive.

At that point, HP has to decide whether to just abandon HP-UX and focus
on Linux, or port HP-UX to the 8086.

And remember that IA64 is a low volume proprietary chip and HP must send
a big fat cheque to Intel every year to keep it alive.

There will come a point where moving HP-UX to the 8086 will be cheaper
than continuing to subsidize Intel to keep IA64 on  life support.