When the tech economy imploded a couple years back, a lot of the industry focus on high-end computing was directed to the possible effect Intel’s
Itanium processor would have on the businesses of Sun Microsystems, IBM, HP and Dell. Many analysts – even those usually considered skeptics –
conceded that Intel’s marketing might would win in the end and leave RISC franchises thinking of fonder times. That vision of a RISC vs. EPIC war,
however, has not turned into a reality, and there is no better proof than the recent announcements from Sun and IBM.
Sun made its own executives blush Monday, as the company announced broad plans for an Opteron-based line of servers. Scott McNealy, CEO at Sun,
abandoned his usual timid approach to anything not Sparc for a full on x86-64-bit assault scheduled to arrive in 2004. With Sun’s broken will comes a
major victory for AMD, as it has now secured two of the top three server vendors in the world for the Opteron platform.
Link: theregister.co.uk
