Originally posted by gilboa
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Performance wise, it actually was competitive. It took a couple generations for its potential to show, but by then the x86 chips had a process node (and therefore clock speed) advantage. Intel couldn't justify using their latest fab when it meant detracting from x86, which was their bread and butter, while Itanium adoption wasn't happening. But if you go back and compare IA64 performance to x86 chips that were built on the same process node, it's definitely competitive.
I consider AMD64 to be more of a footnote. If that were Itanium's biggest problem, that wouldn't have stopped it. But that just shows how important it is that you have competition (or at least the potential) within a given ISA. In a way, you really made my point for me. The big customers understood this, slowing adoption and the whole thing never really got off the ground. IMO, it's little coincidence that ARM, one of the most open ISAs, is now ascendant. Nobody wants to be locked into an ISA that can only be built by one chip maker.
And to bring this post back on topic, the same will happen for any proprietary computing technologies HP might introduce. Best case scenario for them is probably that Oracle supports it and they recapture some piece of the data center market, for a while.
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