That really is going to be an attempt to change the playing field, at least for a certain class of systems.

Sure it represents a fair amount of money being spent on Itanium, but it's money those companies would have spent anyway. HP is the real key. It has the lion's share of the Itanium market, and, not that this is going to happen, but if HP walked away from the Itanium, Intel would stop development on it the next day.

It's a very good processor for that purpose.

There is an IBM Power5 upgrade coming as well.

doesn't fundamentally change UltraSparc and Sun's positioning in any way. It's the type of incremental upgrade that computer makers sort of have to deliver.

[Despite the promised performance improvements, the new processor] doesn't fundamentally change UltraSparc and Sun's positioning in any way, ... It's the type of incremental upgrade that computer makers sort of have to deliver.