Bitwrangler

I Smell Spin

It seems that the Itanium Solutions Alliance is pushing spin the likes of which we have not seen since Ross Perot ran for POTUS in 1992.  Here, they are pushing Itanium as the fastest growing chip on the market.  The immediate Rossism that came to my mind when I read that was from the last debate on Thursday before the 1992 Presidential Election when Ross responded to then Gov. Bill Clinton's assertion that the average Arkansas citizen had doubled his net worth during his tenure as Gov., by saying: (Invoke Ross Perot voice here) "Now folks I'm here to tell you that if you have a penny and someone gives you a penny then you have just doubled your net worth."

 Similarly, Itanium has never had a large market share when compared to the X64/X86 architecture in general and with the X64/X86 market split into AMD/Intel and further divided into Opteron, Barcelona, Harpertown, Nehalem and a dozen more that are still on the market in one form or another and then you take into account the individual release schedules of both AMD and Intel you have a situation where a chip lifespan is well under a year.  How long is it between Itanium releases?

Doubling your market share in at least 2x the life span is at best holding your own.  Oh well as they say, there are lies, damn lies and statistics.  The highest form of this art is Marketing.

Posted at 07:50AM May 21, 2008 in Sun  |  Comments[1]