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On Mon, 06 Sep 2004 18:36:41 +0000, Nick Maclaren wrote:
In article , Dean Kent wrote: One of the interesting things about numbers is that people can get completely lost in them. For example, the numbers published by The Register show that Opteron systems sold for an average of ~$3000 each, while the Itanium systems sold for a mere ~$53,000 each. IOW, one Itanium system is not necessarily equivalent (in either revenue, number of processors, or market segment) to one Opteron system. If I recall, the first figure published for the average selling price of Itanium systems was c. $15,000 - which was the price of a high-end workstation. The initial buyers bought - surprise, surprise - workstations for testing and development. And do you suppose that this is happening with Opterons too? What will be interesting is to see how the average price of the Opteron systems changes. If it goes up significantly, we have evidence of more sales in the server and MPP/cluster market; if it doesn't, then it is stuck in the workstation market. I'm not sure the average system price matters much here. If the UP or SMP Opteron (1xx and 2xx) servers/workstations sell tremendously well and the 4P servers sell tremendously well (for their segment), the average system price will still be far lower than any Itanic (or Z, for that matter). I'm not sure how one compares chip ASP, on one hand, to system price on the other. -- Keith |
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"keith" wrote in message
news On Mon, 06 Sep 2004 18:36:41 +0000, Nick Maclaren wrote: If I recall, the first figure published for the average selling price of Itanium systems was c. $15,000 - which was the price of a high-end workstation. The initial buyers bought - surprise, surprise - workstations for testing and development. And do you suppose that this is happening with Opterons too? It is my recollection that this is exactly the market that AMD originally had in mind for Opteron. While many were making comparisons to Itanium (which AMD skillfully has never denied), all of their marketing material was about displacing Xeon systems. The relative pricing of the chips should also be an indication of this. What will be interesting is to see how the average price of the Opteron systems changes. If it goes up significantly, we have evidence of more sales in the server and MPP/cluster market; if it doesn't, then it is stuck in the workstation market. I'm not sure the average system price matters much here. If the UP or SMP Opteron (1xx and 2xx) servers/workstations sell tremendously well and the 4P servers sell tremendously well (for their segment), the average system price will still be far lower than any Itanic (or Z, for that matter). I'm not sure how one compares chip ASP, on one hand, to system price on the other. As you know, you can't. Companies such as Stratus will make fault-tolerant, fully redundant systems selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars using $1K/$2K Xeons. Thus far, these companies have not used Opterons. Likely it has nothing at all to do with whether Opterons can or cannot be used in such systems, but is due to the fact that such systems take a *long time* to design, build and validate... and that their customers expect certain attributes, including various name-brand components. The real point here is that you cannot simply count systems sold across all market segments, then make some general statement about the relative success/failure of a component used within a fraction of them. This is not an apples/apples comparison, and I suspect that many people know this - even those who report/repeat such numbers. Of course, there is always the problem of properly identifying each market segment as well as the intended target of the component. Once you can do that, you have a better chance of determining what 'success' and 'failure' really means. On a somewhat related note, it was reported that Bob Evans passed away very recently. He led the S/360 architecture team, which apparently cost $5B back in the '60s - at at time when IBMs annual revenues were just North of $3B. This would be the equivalent of Intel spending multiple tens of millions of dollars on a new architecture (no, I am not trying to equate S/360 with Itanium in anything except corporate investment terms). That one turned out spectacularly successful, and I doubt that Itanium achieve even a small fraction of that success - but if they can carve out, and hold onto, a niche in the lucrative high-end space, it may not be as unsuccessful as many would like it to be (or, it might be - but time will tell). Regards, Dean |
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In article , keith writes: | | If I recall, the first figure published for the average selling | price of Itanium systems was c. $15,000 - which was the price of | a high-end workstation. The initial buyers bought - surprise, | surprise - workstations for testing and development. | | And do you suppose that this is happening with Opterons too? I know that it was, for the period for which we have figures. Whether it is continuing is another matter. | What will be interesting is to see how the average price of the | Opteron systems changes. If it goes up significantly, we have | evidence of more sales in the server and MPP/cluster market; if | it doesn't, then it is stuck in the workstation market. | | I'm not sure the average system price matters much here. If the UP or SMP | Opteron (1xx and 2xx) servers/workstations sell tremendously well and | the 4P servers sell tremendously well (for their segment), the average | system price will still be far lower than any Itanic (or Z, for that | matter). Sigh. Yes. That is largely because the Itanic has completely lost out in the workstation and probably even small server market. As other people say, that wasn't the intent. It certainly wasn't the intent that it would be an HP and SGI only chip. | I'm not sure how one compares chip ASP, on one hand, to system price on | the other. One doesn't. Or, at least, I don't. Regards, Nick Maclaren. |
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In article , "Dean Kent" writes: | | On a somewhat related note, it was reported that Bob Evans passed away very | recently. He led the S/360 architecture team, which apparently cost $5B | back in the '60s - at at time when IBMs annual revenues were just North of | $3B. This would be the equivalent of Intel spending multiple tens of | millions of dollars on a new architecture (no, I am not trying to equate | S/360 with Itanium in anything except corporate investment terms). That | one turned out spectacularly successful, and I doubt that Itanium achieve | even a small fraction of that success - but if they can carve out, and hold | onto, a niche in the lucrative high-end space, it may not be as unsuccessful | as many would like it to be (or, it might be - but time will tell). I posted that analogy nearly a year back, and I was rhetorically asked by a Itanic flag waver whether I meant that it would dominate the whole industry for a decade. I replied, no, that I meant it would take the company to the brink of bankruptcy (I believe that IBM was within 6 months of filing) and it be a matter of chance whether it went over the edge. [ Note that, as Brooks says, it wasn't the hardware that had the trouble, but the software. The hardware had its problems, but not on the same scale. ] Well, as it happened, the Intel bean-counters and senior executives had enough sense to refuse to bet the farm on the Itanic (which was believed NOT to be the case at the time I posted). So Intel avoided the the crisis that IBM had with the System/360. Regards, Nick Maclaren. |
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