[svlug] It is all starting to make sense

[George Bonser]

On Wed, 11 Nov 1998, Jonathan Sergent wrote:

> I'm personally not convinced that Intel will be able to get people to
> move to Merced just because it's from Intel.  There's already a good
> deal of 64-bit competition out there (Alpha and UltraSparc and PA-RISC)
> some of which will even run Windows (Alpha).

But Intel controls production of the Alpha. As for UltraSparc and PA-RISC,
that is not really true either since both Sun and HP will be moving to
Merced. 


  

> I don't think Intel has
> the pull to get everyone to make the big migration when it's released.

They already have.  The Merced is Microsoft, Sun, HP, and SGI's CPU of the
future. That much has already been announced.


> I don't think it will flop, but I don't think it will have the market 
> share that Intel has in the 32-bit space by any stretch.

Of course not. A 32-bit system can be had for well under $1000. Just the
Merced CPU is going to cost more than that. You are not going to see very
many in home computers, this is a CPU designed for large servers. Who
needs a >1GHz 64-bit screamer at home? Who wants to pay that electric
bill?

> Regardless, there's no arguing that there will be a big market for
> IA-32 (that's the P.C. name for x86) processors for a long time, and
> that's obviously what AMD is going for...

The desktop market will remain 32-bit for a long time. The server market
will migrate to Merced giving IT management the choice of several
different operating systems on the same hardware. This should be the end
of NT Server.

George Bonser

The Linux "We're never going out of business" sale at an FTP site near you!


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