[Info-vax] Comment on the future of OpenVMS

[Christopher]

> 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.

I suppose that depends on what kind of performance you are talking
about.  For some large applications, you just can't get an x86/x64
chip to do the same things.

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

HP is not about to abandon it's flagship operating system.  They are
at feature parity (more or less) with IBM, and I really don't seem
them dropping HP-UX.  Especially with Oracle now in ascendance with
Solaris.  I like Linux, but there are places where it's still a hard
sell in comparison to AIX/HP-UX/Solaris.  I could see HP dropping
OpenVMS and trying to position HP-UX to fill that gap, but I really
don't see them dropping HP-UX.

> 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.

There *may* come a point.  Itanium is gaining increased traction.  For
example, we have one big customer that only buys Itanium.  I was
involved in enabling our product to support Itanium on Windows
recently, which we didn't support before.  We also support Itanium on
Linux, and for good reason.  If the Tukwila series isn't spectacularly
disappointing, I have hope that IA64 might recover some profitability.