New CPU's from Intel?

* ***** charles:

I was interested in buying an Itanium once from HP. The beuracracy one
must go through just to get to the person who has the ability to sell you
one is horrendous. I didn't think the pricing was too out of line with
Power
and Sparc its' major competitors since they were all in the same ballpark.
I finally lost interest. Until anyone can just go to a website and order
one
with several clicks of a mouse, the Itanium will stay a small very small
player.

Well, most customers probably don't order a Superdome with 64 processors
just over the website with several clicks of a mouse. That's not how
enterprise computing works.

HP thinks the product needs a lot of support.

They are right.

Not for people like
me who would just buy the hardware and install Linux on it and run the
apps I want.

You probably don't spend the money for a big rx or Superdome, so you're
certainly not a target customer. And even for people like you there were
and still are Itanium computers that would fit your need. rx2600s are
dirt cheap as are HP RENEW zx2000 and zx6000 workstations, so what?

HP, IBM and SUN all want to sell you "solutions" for high
margin prices.

That's why the high end allows for that.

They don't really believe in the commodity markets.

They definitely do. HP for example is one of the biggest vendor for x86
servers from single processor workgroup models to highend opteron
servers. Sun also learned that they can't ignore comodity hardware and
now is making a great part of their renevue from it.

There
used to be several companies a while back that advertised in Pricewatch
1U rack mount servers for $399. They were fully functional with Celerons
or XP cpu's with 256M ram and small IDE hd's. All had Linux on them.
Some how they didn't last, either the sellers couldn't make enough money
or they couldn't get the parts at a reasonable enough cost.

These vendors died simply because they were nobody. Companies buying
servers usually want known vendor with known good support behind it.
Something that these el-cheapo guys can't provide...

IBM, HP and SUN sell x86 because they have too.

They sell it because they make the most money from it.

The customer would
just go to another supplier if the big companies didn't have the products
the
customer wants/ed to buy. The big companies would much rather you
buy a Power/IA64/Sparc system since it means more profit for them in the
long run.

Not really. Proprietary architectures are very expensive to produce due
to the relative low production numbers. So they pay a lot for making
these machines but on the other side have to compete price-wise with
much cheaper comodity hardware which gets even faster and faster almost
every month.

There's a reason why intel and HP started Itanium because it was meant
to replace all the other ultra-expensive proprietary architectures like
SPARC, PA-RISC, POWER, MIPS etc. That Itanium isn't really cheaper and
came much too late is a different story, though. The proprietary
architectures are struggling. PA-RISC already has a definite termination
point, and Itanium is almost high-end only (Superdome class or systems
with more than 16 cpus), in the lower categries it's already dead. SGI
which relied on their proprietary MIPS and then also on Itanium is
already on the ground.

There still are areas (especially the high end) where traditional RISC
systems have advantages over comodity hardware, but these areas are
constantly getting smaller. You can be sure that as soon as comodity
hardware is ready for the high end the remaining vendors of traditional
RISC systems gladly will terminate their prorpietary systems that cost
them lot of money if they can offer the same solutions with comodity parts.

Even Dell just gave in to selling AMD server systems and Dell
doesn't have a major chip line to protect.

Dell is probably the worst possible example because they have no real
own research and development. They are just buying parts or have them
produced for them by someone else.

Benjamin

***** charles wrote:
I have heard that it does take a smart programmer to generate good
code for the Itanium. There have been quite a few articles lately on
how to modify the GCC so that it generates more efficient code for
the IA64. Most programmers it seems who write code for the IA64
use the Intel C compiler.

Seems to be the only compiler that does any good on Itanium. But now
Intel is putting more emphasis on Linux on Itanium, so it looks like
it's going to have to help the GCC people get working properly on
Itanium. So much open-source that they might decide would not be
licensable without gcc.

I was interested in buying an Itanium once from HP. The beuracracy one
must go through just to get to the person who has the ability to sell you
one is horrendous. I didn't think the pricing was too out of line with
Power
and Sparc its' major competitors since they were all in the same ballpark.
I finally lost interest. Until anyone can just go to a website and order
one
with several clicks of a mouse, the Itanium will stay a small very small
player. HP thinks the product needs a lot of support.

You would've probably been a good Itanium workstation buyer.
Unfortunately, there weren't enough people like you buying these
things, so even HP got rid of their Itanium workstations.

There
used to be several companies a while back that advertised in Pricewatch
1U rack mount servers for $399. They were fully functional with Celerons
or XP cpu's with 256M ram and small IDE hd's. All had Linux on them.
Some how they didn't last, either the sellers couldn't make enough money
or they couldn't get the parts at a reasonable enough cost.

Companies want support when they buy servers. Smaller mail-order
companies can't offer that kind of support.

long run. Even Dell just gave in to selling AMD server systems and Dell
doesn't have a major chip line to protect.

Except in the case of Dell, the AMD systems would *be* their big-iron,
high-margin product.

Yousuf Khan

"Benjamin Gawert" wrote in message
...
* ***** charles:

I was interested in buying an Itanium once from HP. The beuracracy one
must go through just to get to the person who has the ability to sell
you
one is horrendous. I didn't think the pricing was too out of line with
Power
and Sparc its' major competitors since they were all in the same
ballpark.
I finally lost interest. Until anyone can just go to a website and
order
one
with several clicks of a mouse, the Itanium will stay a small very small
player.

Well, most customers probably don't order a Superdome with 64 processors
just over the website with several clicks of a mouse. That's not how
enterprise computing works.

HP thinks the product needs a lot of support.

They are right.

Not for people like
me who would just buy the hardware and install Linux on it and run the
apps I want.

You probably don't spend the money for a big rx or Superdome, so you're
certainly not a target customer. And even for people like you there were
and still are Itanium computers that would fit your need. rx2600s are
dirt cheap as are HP RENEW zx2000 and zx6000 workstations, so what?

HP, IBM and SUN all want to sell you "solutions" for high
margin prices.

That's why the high end allows for that.

They don't really believe in the commodity markets.

They definitely do. HP for example is one of the biggest vendor for x86
servers from single processor workgroup models to highend opteron
servers. Sun also learned that they can't ignore comodity hardware and
now is making a great part of their renevue from it.

Cheapest server HP advertises $499. plus shipping and tax It has:
minitower case with ps
Celeron 2.5GHz
512M ram
80G SATA drive
48X cdrom reader
everything else on board

Pricewatch equivalent:
$248.95 plus shipping prebuilt and tested

The Pricewatch version has an Intel motherboard and the same time
on the warrantee. Now, you and I know that it is a lot like comparing
apples and oranges BUT hp buys quantity thousands and can get the
parts a lot cheaper than you and me.

Commodity pricing is where margins are 2, 3, 4 percent over ones'
cost not 100 or 200 percent markups. Do you still propose that HP
is in the commodity market? Just because it sells x86 servers?
Same goes for Dell, IBM, Sun, Gateway etc....

later......

There
used to be several companies a while back that advertised in Pricewatch
1U rack mount servers for $399. They were fully functional with
Celerons
or XP cpu's with 256M ram and small IDE hd's. All had Linux on them.
Some how they didn't last, either the sellers couldn't make enough money
or they couldn't get the parts at a reasonable enough cost.

These vendors died simply because they were nobody. Companies buying
servers usually want known vendor with known good support behind it.
Something that these el-cheapo guys can't provide...

IBM, HP and SUN sell x86 because they have too.

They sell it because they make the most money from it.

The customer would
just go to another supplier if the big companies didn't have the
products
the
customer wants/ed to buy. The big companies would much rather you
buy a Power/IA64/Sparc system since it means more profit for them in the
long run.

Not really. Proprietary architectures are very expensive to produce due
to the relative low production numbers. So they pay a lot for making
these machines but on the other side have to compete price-wise with
much cheaper comodity hardware which gets even faster and faster almost
every month.

There's a reason why intel and HP started Itanium because it was meant
to replace all the other ultra-expensive proprietary architectures like
SPARC, PA-RISC, POWER, MIPS etc. That Itanium isn't really cheaper and
came much too late is a different story, though. The proprietary
architectures are struggling. PA-RISC already has a definite termination
point, and Itanium is almost high-end only (Superdome class or systems
with more than 16 cpus), in the lower categries it's already dead. SGI
which relied on their proprietary MIPS and then also on Itanium is
already on the ground.

There still are areas (especially the high end) where traditional RISC
systems have advantages over comodity hardware, but these areas are
constantly getting smaller. You can be sure that as soon as comodity
hardware is ready for the high end the remaining vendors of traditional
RISC systems gladly will terminate their prorpietary systems that cost
them lot of money if they can offer the same solutions with comodity
parts.

Even Dell just gave in to selling AMD server systems and Dell
doesn't have a major chip line to protect.

Dell is probably the worst possible example because they have no real
own research and development. They are just buying parts or have them
produced for them by someone else.

Benjamin

* ***** charles:

Cheapest server HP advertises $499. plus shipping and tax It has:
minitower case with ps
Celeron 2.5GHz
512M ram
80G SATA drive
48X cdrom reader
everything else on board

Pricewatch equivalent:
$248.95 plus shipping prebuilt and tested

right, just without the availability of onsite support (not even NBD,
and just forget about anything with 8hrs or 4hrs reaction time), not
tested or certified for compatibility of important applications, no
stable hardware (means that most hardware used like system board etc
doesn't change in a certain series) but continuously changing parts from
the cheapest source available, and certainly even not EMC tested (and
forget about stable BIOSes and drivers that are thoroughly tested like
it's done by HP and the other big players). And certainly pricewatch
doesn't use high quality PSUs like HP does (they use Delta PSUs which
are very efficient), the pricewatch system certainly has no form of
hardware monitoring or management functions, and I doubt that pricewatch
uses a case of the same quality and serviceability like HP does.

Just comparing some Ghz, Gbyte and the price tag might work for joe
homeuser but definitely not for professional IT...

The Pricewatch version has an Intel motherboard and the same time
on the warrantee. Now, you and I know that it is a lot like comparing
apples and oranges BUT hp buys quantity thousands and can get the
parts a lot cheaper than you and me.

I wonder where you got the price for the HP server (which model btw?)
from. Hopefully not from the HP site because the street price usually is
_much_ lower...

Here in Germany a HP ProLiant ML110 with 3GHz Pentium4 is 349EUR, the
Celeron models are even cheaper...

Commodity pricing is where margins are 2, 3, 4 percent over ones'
cost not 100 or 200 percent markups. Do you still propose that HP
is in the commodity market? Just because it sells x86 servers?
Same goes for Dell, IBM, Sun, Gateway etc....

I don't know where you live but here in Germany Dell and HP are indeed
comparable to noname brands price-wise. Especially HP has _very_
attractive prices (at least if you don't buy from them directly), and if
you go HP RENEW (factory refurbished ex-demo systems which look like
new, smell like new and have the same warranty like a new system but
cost up to 40% less) you usually get unbeatable prices.

BTW: your postings would be much easier to read if you would remove the
parts that you are not answering to.

Benjamin

"Benjamin Gawert" wrote in message
...
* ***** charles:

Cheapest server HP advertises $499. plus shipping and tax It has:
minitower case with ps
Celeron 2.5GHz
512M ram
80G SATA drive
48X cdrom reader
everything else on board

Pricewatch equivalent:
$248.95 plus shipping prebuilt and tested

right, just without the availability of onsite support (not even NBD,
and just forget about anything with 8hrs or 4hrs reaction time), not
tested or certified for compatibility of important applications, no
stable hardware (means that most hardware used like system board etc
doesn't change in a certain series) but continuously changing parts from
the cheapest source available, and certainly even not EMC tested (and
forget about stable BIOSes and drivers that are thoroughly tested like
it's done by HP and the other big players). And certainly pricewatch
doesn't use high quality PSUs like HP does (they use Delta PSUs which
are very efficient), the pricewatch system certainly has no form of
hardware monitoring or management functions, and I doubt that pricewatch
uses a case of the same quality and serviceability like HP does.

I understand all of the arguments above and like I said below
comparing "apples to oranges".

Just comparing some Ghz, Gbyte and the price tag might work for joe
homeuser but definitely not for professional IT...

The standardized Intel motherboard do take a lot of the risk out of it.
The market for "harry homeowner" is infinitely larger than the very small
world of professional computer workers.

The Pricewatch version has an Intel motherboard and the same time
on the warrantee. Now, you and I know that it is a lot like comparing
apples and oranges BUT hp buys quantity thousands and can get the
parts a lot cheaper than you and me.

I wonder where you got the price for the HP server (which model btw?)
from. Hopefully not from the HP site because the street price usually is
_much_ lower...
Here in Germany a HP ProLiant ML110 with 3GHz Pentium4 is 349EUR, the
Celeron models are even cheaper...

I just went to HP's website and looked for the cheapest server it
listed. It was an HP ProLiant ML110 G3 as outlined above.
I was acting as a regular person and not an industry guru/dealer. I am
sure I could also "beat the price" from other sources like you can
where you are. I am in the US.

Commodity pricing is where margins are 2, 3, 4 percent over ones'
cost not 100 or 200 percent markups. Do you still propose that HP
is in the commodity market? Just because it sells x86 servers?
Same goes for Dell, IBM, Sun, Gateway etc....

My conclusion still stands, they are not in the commodity business.

later.......