DailyTech - Intel's Itanium Gets a $10 Billion Lifeline

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Hardware Intel's Itanium Gets a $10 Billion Lifeline
Brandon Hill (Blog) - January 27, 2006 2:00 PM

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10 comment(s) - last by fnord123.. on Jan 28 at 3:48 PM

"I'm not dead yet"

Intel's Itanium processor had been written off as a failure in the marketplace many times over. Last year, Dell and IBM dropped their Itanium based servers and the processor has been facing stiffer competition from Sun Microsystems' UltraSparc, HP's own PA-RISC and IBM's Power.

Well, Itanium is now getting a new lease on life in the form of a $10 billion cash infusion from Intel, HP and various other "friends."

Intel has already invested billions of dollars in Itanium, and the company declined to say what percentage of the latest $10 billion investment it would be providing. The investment is worthwhile, the company believes, because the mission-critical server market addressed by Itanium represents a $140 billion hardware opportunity over the next five years, and nearly 60% of the installed hardware in the segment is three years old or greater.

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Python

By Alphafox78 on 1/27/2006 2:04:38 PM , Rating: 2

I dont want to go on the cart!
I feel happy!!

RE: Python

By Xenoterranos on 1/28/2006 3:37:22 PM , Rating: 2

*konk*

right then.

Parent

WTF?

By bob661 on 1/27/2006 7:38:27 PM , Rating: 2

Why would HP and these other "friends" want to hork that kind of cash at a dead product?

RE: WTF?

By czarchazm on 1/28/2006 1:21:19 AM , Rating: 2

That is precisely the point. No company would invest money into something that isn't marketable. Having said that, mistakes obviously occur.

Who here, in his/her opinion, is "worth" $10 billion?

I know that I certainly won't make that sort of revenue, much less the $140 some billion that Intel says there is to be made.

Parent

Score

By phaxmohdem on 1/27/2006 2:14:40 PM , Rating: 2

Well, just glad its not MY money they're burning over at Intel HQ. Hope it pans out for them, but I don't see Itanium becoming the smash hit they want unless something uber cool happens to its architecture. Suns new Niagra CHip could also spell disaster for Itanic, if it catches on quickly and proves to be more than just a paper tiger.

Itanic

By Snoop on 1/27/2006 3:21:08 PM , Rating: 2

Continuing development of Itanic is a big mistake for the industry. All we need is another propreitary (IA64) platform to drive any and all competition out of the market :(

No heartbeat!

By bupkus on 1/27/2006 4:15:32 PM , Rating: 2

CLEAR!

Itanium projections are impossible

By fnord123 on 1/28/2006 3:48:01 PM , Rating: 2

Intel just cannot admit that Itanium is a gigantic mistake and is making wildly ridiculous predictions to try to justify continued investment.

According to IDC (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS2001...) the entire, worldwide quarterly server market is $12B. That translates to $50B a year.

For Intel's $140B 2010 projection to come true, not only must the server market triple in 4 years, but Itanium must sell 100% of all servers - replacing all Sun, Xeon, Opteron, etc. Amazing!