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Dell Dumping Itanium
njcoder writes "In a PC World article it is disclosed and confirmed by Intel that Dell is dropping support for Itanium processors. 'After Advanced Micro Devices demonstrated that 64-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set offered a smoother transition to 64-bit computing, Intel released a version of Xeon with similar technology, and Dell now offers 64-bit Xeon processors across its product line.'" More from the article: "The chip maker has since backed off its original statements about Itanium and is now promoting the chip as a high-performance replacement for reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processors in Unix servers from companies such as Sun Microsystems and IBM. Hewlett-Packard, a co-designer of the processor, has embraced Itanium as the processor of choice for its high-end servers. Fujitsu. and NEC are also among the system vendors that sell servers with the processor." The story is also being reported at Ars Technica.
SGI uses Itanium for their Altix line of products that run Linux. They need Itanuim for its ability to handle hundreds of processors in one system with cc:NUMA, and its huge physical address space for their customers who need several terabytes of RAM in one system.
No, Intel tried (and failed) to trademark a number and so had to come up with names.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
if as you say "Intel offers a better deal" -- and that deal was based upon exclusivity. (In other words: "You get a 15% discount if you sell only Intel chips"), It seems to me that that would be illegal and anti-competitive.
What on earth do you mean? That's about as standard as it gets. It's called exclusive licensing, and that's the way it goes. Companies offer price incentives to sign exclusive deals. It's competitive because Dell is free to sign exclusively with anybody.
Here some other examples: Your job. Your company offers you $100,000/year to build widgets *exclusively* for them. If they wanted a clause in your contract that said that you may not build widgets for anyone else, you aren't going to say it's anticompetitive.
How about your car? Toyotas ship with (I'm making this up) Panasonic audio components. If you asked Toyota to make a line with Zenith components, they'll probably say "sorry, but we have an exclusive agreement with panasonic."
I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it assuredly is not illegal.