We have seen the first signs of weakness in Intel's hegemony on processors. The 64-bit computing walls begin to crumble during the past year. Back then, Intel made a mistake when it came out with its new 64-bit Itanium chips that used different instruction sets from the prior x86 line. Ever since, the competition has grown in the space, and now, system builders have, for the first time in a long while, real choices when it comes to what lies at the heart of their highest-powered machines:
Part of Intel's problem is that machines are cheap these days, and that the cost differential for Itanium is pretty steep: $2,000 can buy you a lot of server horsepower, or a terrific desktop with better than average workstation features, for non-Intel 64-bit CPUs. The Itaniums can cost five or more times as much.
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