2CPU.com » News » March 2005 » Itanium sales fall $13.4bn shy of $14bn forecast

The Register is reporting that Itanium sales over the first two quarters have fallen quite short of initial projections.

In actual fact, total Itanium sales have hit $606m through the first two quarters of this year. Other organs might mock a $13.4bn miss by one of the world's leading number crunching firms but not us. We'll let you come to your own conclusions about such an incredible gaffe.

You can read the entire report over here.

12/03/2004 03:27 PM: Intel may buy out HP Itanium crew by duke
For those of you craving Itanium-related news, according to The Inquirer, Intel may buy out HP's Itanium crew. But the more sensational rumor which we're unable yet to confirm is that HP's far from in...

10/27/2004 01:56 PM: Itanium Powers NASA Supercomputer by duke
The Inquirer also has a post up about a new supercomputer that NASA has thrown together using Itanium2 processors. The $50 million machine is a cluster of 20 computers built by NASA's Ames Research Ce...

09/27/2004 02:47 PM: Itanium unsuitable for workstations, Intel says by duke
The Inquirer is discussing a statement by an Intel rep in the Wall Street Journal. Apparently Itanium was never really important to the workstation market? THE ITANIUM was never really important for t...

09/20/2004 03:32 PM: IBM mocks Itanium server sales - again by duke
The Register is letting us know that IBM has decided to mock Itanium sales... again. It's fairly typical for IBM to poke fun at Itanium despite its place behind HP and SGI in sales of servers based on...

09/13/2004 03:03 PM: The Solaris on Itanium discussion stalls again by duke
The Register is reporting that previously discussed plans on making Solaris available for Itanium might be stalling. When asked by The Register about Solaris on Itanium, Intel's new server processor c...

09/02/2004 03:06 PM: Intel Itanium Madison 9M delayed? by duke
The Inquirer is running a short report on the apparent delay of Intel's next Itanium processor, the Madison 9M. It speculates that the delay may have been caused by its lightning shift to dual cores, ...

08/31/2004 02:14 PM: Itanium sales fall $13.4bn shy of $14bn forecast by duke
The Register is reporting that Intel's Itanium sales haven't hit the forcasts set by IDC. Okay, well, not quite $14bn. That's the total analyst powerhouse IDC had once predicted Itanium would reach by...

08/25/2004 03:23 PM: Intel pledges to bring Itanium down to Xeon price-point by Jim_
The Register is reporting that Intel plans on bringing Itanium down to Xeon's price-point by 2007. So Intel is essentially planning to subsidise Itanium-supporting server OEMs' margins. They'll be abl...

08/20/2004 02:30 PM: OpenVMS on Itanium = Fast? by Jim_
The Inquirer is reporting that OpenVMS seems to run quite fast on Intel's Itanium. ... a presentation given at HP World by OpenVMS engineer Greg Jordan indicates that the operating system running on I...

07/28/2004 02:05 PM: NASA to use giant SGI Linux Itanium cluster by Jim_
The Inquirer has some information posted about a cluster that NASA is putting together. Imagine 10,240 Itaniums working in tandem. The system consists of twenty 512 CPU SGI Altix systems, using 500TB ...

Hooz Administrator Posts: 2337 Joined: 2000-03-29

#35442 Posted on: 03/30/2005 08:21 PM *waits for duraid* [size=1][url="http://www.2cpu.com"]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one! Are you folding? [url="http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=3074"]2CPU.com Folding@Home Team[/url] [url="http://www.heatware.com/eval.php?id=19979"]My Heatware[/url][/size]

nine Registered User Posts: 1313 Joined: 2004-03-11

#35443 Posted on: 03/30/2005 08:25 PM "Other organs"?

Jim_ Administrator Posts: 3464 Joined: 2000-03-15

#35444 Posted on: 03/30/2005 08:46 PM Originally posted by nine "Other organs"? Other organizations, is probably what they meant to say. Heh. [url="http://www.2cpu.com"][size=1]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one! [url="http://www.jimkirk.org"]jimkirk.org[/url] - Not a Myth any Longer. Just a Dad.[/size]

Absolue_Zero Registered User Posts: 39 Joined: 2005-03-11

#35445 Posted on: 03/30/2005 09:02 PM Organ has another meaning. A periodical that is published by a special interest group; "the organ of the communist party" Probably better known in the UK than elsewhere.

Jim_ Administrator Posts: 3464 Joined: 2000-03-15

#35446 Posted on: 03/30/2005 09:08 PM Ah... you silly British. [url="http://www.2cpu.com"][size=1]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one! [url="http://www.jimkirk.org"]jimkirk.org[/url] - Not a Myth any Longer. Just a Dad.[/size]

nine Registered User Posts: 1313 Joined: 2004-03-11

#35447 Posted on: 03/30/2005 09:14 PM I've never heard "organs" used that way before. Thanks for the clarification, AZ. I thought my liver or kidneys might have an opinion on the Itanium, but I guess not.

i_wolf labhair dom as gaelige Posts: 2097 Joined: 2002-11-19

#35448 Posted on: 03/30/2005 09:32 PM Yup in Ireland too when you refer to your 'organ' usually its slang for referring to your nob/dick! One thing troubles me, this article is dated over 7 months ago ?! the 30th August 2004 to be exact. Is it valid news today and more to the point... should it be posted today? Not an attack on you duke at all, but I really don't think it should be posted. A lot has happened in that time, publicity has improved significantly for the Itanium line within that time with contracts such as Nasa's supercomputer built by SGI using Itanium processors. I wouldn't be surprised if events like this would have a strong impact on sales figures. That is not to say that they would recoup even half of that 13 billion defecit, but still it is likely that the article is so old now it doesn't represent the reality today. Hung like a donkey. Go like a horse!

wattly SMP Newbie Posts: 18 Joined: 2004-10-16

#35449 Posted on: 03/30/2005 10:27 PM Here is the link you want to post, covers sales for the whole year. http://www.theregister.com/2005/02/28/itanium_04_sales/ $1.4bn in 2004 out of an estimated $28bn. Same story, only double the numbers

tfp Embedded C Lackey Posts: 340 Joined: 2002-09-22

#35450 Posted on: 03/30/2005 10:46 PM Yeah thats not very good but its not horrible. All, however, is not as bleak as it seems. Itanium did show solid gains from 2003 to 2004. Vendors moved 18,730 Itanium servers worth $479m in 2003 compared to 33,623 servers and that $1.4bn in 2004, IDC said. When the numbers start shifting from decent growth to stagnet or a loss then they really have problems. (That is if the numbers are near the current sales figures) Writing the code that breaks your hardware...

terminalrecluse is home now Posts: 3802 Joined: 2004-08-07

#35451 Posted on: 03/31/2005 12:09 AM Itanium 2 has its uses. For every Itanium 2 cpu you could get 2 or even 3 Opteron cpus. So...that could be the reason. 121 total Ghz, 304GB in total memory... Arch Linux - stable : 3930k @ 4.4Ghz, 64GB DDR3, 120GB Samsung 840, HX850 DAS - Norco 4020 - 20x Seagate 3TB, 1KW PSU FBSD 10 ZFS server - SM Chassis, SM X8DTE, 2x L5520 Xeons, 48GB Reg DDR3 ULP, IBM 5015 w/ 512MB DDR2 cache, RAID-50 - 42TB storage Dell C6100 - 4 nodes, 2 1.1KW psu's, 2x L5520s, 6x e5530s, 192GB reg DDR3 (48GB each), F@H, etc

Slaughter111 Registered User Posts: 728 Joined: 2002-12-22

#35452 Posted on: 03/31/2005 12:21 AM Originally posted by wattly Here is the link you want to post, covers sales for the whole year. http://www.theregister.com/2005/02/28/itanium_04_sales/ $1.4bn in 2004 out of an estimated $28bn. Same story, only double the numbers Is this where the nickname 'Itanic' originates from? She sank like the Titanic!!!:eek: A+ | MCSA | MCITP | CommVault CVSA/CVSE | VMware VCP 4 Heatware: Slaughter111

rmn oh my, it's huge! Posts: 6013 Joined: 2002-01-26

#35453 Posted on: 03/31/2005 12:51 AM Originally posted by wattly $1.4bn in 2004 out of an estimated $28bn. Same story, only double the numbers I predict that a being living in an alternative reality will post something similar to: "you do realise that Itanium sales have doubled, right? Show me any other architecture that is growing that fast!" P.S. - I'm going to use the secret word that opens the wormhole into his universe: Opteron! RMN ~~~

Swank Woof Posts: 110 Joined: 2002-07-22

#35454 Posted on: 03/31/2005 01:20 AM Did aliens abduct "Captain Itanic" ? Inquiring minds want to know. I think it is obvious to most people that Itanium is going to be a niche platform instead of a market leader that many firms predicted a few short years ago. I'll wait for "he who we shall not name" to show up before I present further arguments. No need to preach to the choir.

Pariah SMP Newbie Posts: 31 Joined: 2001-08-16

#35455 Posted on: 03/31/2005 01:25 AM "Total Itanium server sales hit $1.4bn in 2004, according to IDC. The same analyst firm tossed out the $28bn figure in 2000 right before the first Itanium chip hit the market." Wow, a tech prediction made 4 years ago before a product was even released was way off. That's some real news. I'm sure Intel wished the Itanium was doing better, but this wasn't a sales forecast made by them last year or something of similar ilk. Not surprisingly, www.wehateintel.com (aka theregister), chose the tilt that Intel missed sales that they never predicted rather than focusing on what this was much closer to; an awful prediction that someone else made. Looks like IDC is worse at predictions than Intel is at selling CPU's.

sAvAgE69 Unregistered

#35456 Posted on: 03/31/2005 01:36 AM Well truth be known that the Itanics are a ripoff and can NEVER compete with the POWER5 chip. *also waiting for Duraid *and Ducks for incoming flames

i_wolf labhair dom as gaelige Posts: 2097 Joined: 2002-11-19

#35457 Posted on: 03/31/2005 01:59 AM Wow, a tech prediction made 4 years ago before a product was even released was way off. That's some real news. I'm sure Intel wished the Itanium was doing better, but this wasn't a sales forecast made by them last year or something of similar ilk. Not surprisingly, www.wehateintel.com (aka theregister), chose the tilt that Intel missed sales that they never predicted rather than focusing on what this was much closer to; an awful prediction that someone else made. Looks like IDC is worse at predictions than Intel is at selling CPU's. Excellent post. This is part of the reason I don't think it should be posted as news. For a start the article is out of date and the information it is referencing is years out of date. I often get the impression that theregister/Inq have a grudge with the Itanium. At the end of the day its sales numbers aren't meant to be in the same ballpark as a Xeon or Opteron. Its targetting an entirely different end of the workstation/server market. Intel may have originally intended differently but that is the way it has worked out for them. The market itself has decided that it should target a different segment than perhaps what Intel would have originally envisaged over 4 or 5 years ago. Thats life. Thats business. I doubt sales of SGI's Tezro or Fuel are anywhere in the same ballpark as a Xeon or Opteron rig, yet similarly they are designed to target a much different audience. Does that make the Fuel or Tezro a failure.... no not at all, but according to the same logic the Inq/Register applies to the Itanium, it does :rolleyes: Hung like a donkey. Go like a horse!

Vuke69 Bitpimp Posts: 377 Joined: 2001-03-16

#35458 Posted on: 03/31/2005 04:53 AM WTF? So what is this pick on duraid day? I was under the impression that we were all more mature than that. I guess I was wrong.

Pontius Aspiring Duallie Posts: 70 Joined: 2004-04-20

#35459 Posted on: 03/31/2005 05:00 AM Yet another example of why I never listen to tech industry predictions. They are usually pulled out of thin air and are wrong. I'm not an investor, so I don't care about predicting things. I look at what's good for the price and buy accordingly.

Glock Glock Operator Posts: 205 Joined: 2001-06-13

#35460 Posted on: 03/31/2005 05:30 AM Originally posted by i_wolf Excellent post. I doubt sales of SGI's Tezro or Fuel are anywhere in the same ballpark as a Xeon or Opteron rig, yet similarly they are designed to target a much different audience. Does that make the Fuel or Tezro a failure.... no not at all, but according to the same logic the Inq/Register applies to the Itanium, it does :rolleyes: SGI's Tezro and Fuel are MIPS-based machines (R16000 that is). The newer Linux-based Prism (viz) and Altix (server) machines are Itanium-based and will ultimately be SGI's undoing. Another example how things go wrong when the beancounters make tech decisions. But i_wolf, I think your point was about each architecture having its own advantages and I agree. But then there's betting on the wrong horse and soon SGI will we the only kid in the sandbox, playing with the Itanium. To end on a positive note, I'll be happy to buy me a sweet $300 4-cpu Tezro from e-bay in a couple of years and re-discover what real computing on a real computer running a real OS was all about. Can't run UNIX on an IMSAI, can't you? "What is understood, need not to be discussed..." Loren Adams

rmn oh my, it's huge! Posts: 6013 Joined: 2002-01-26

#35461 Posted on: 03/31/2005 05:49 AM Originally posted by i_wolf I doubt sales of SGI's Tezro or Fuel are anywhere in the same ballpark as a Xeon or Opteron rig, yet similarly they are designed to target a much different audience. Does that make the Fuel or Tezro a failure.... no not at all, but according to the same logic the Inq/Register applies to the Itanium, it does :rolleyes: No. SGI workstations have never been hailed or marketed as the best thing since sliced bread, or as some huge leap forward in computing. IPF and IA64 were. They were going to "do it right"; get rid of obsolete architectures like x86 and the Alpha and clear the way for the amazing Itanium. It couldn't possibly go wrong. In one word: hubris. In a funnier word: Itanic. The Inquirer and the Register have the same attitude towards any company or product in similar circumstances (remember their litte "war" with Sun a couple of years ago, their "skirmishes" with ATI and NVidia, etc.). Personally, I'll take a site that is "biased" against big corporations over 1000 sites that are ready to lick the ass of any company that sends a few free samples their way, any day. And when that site actually has news (as opposed to copies of press releases), the choice becomes even simpler. RMN ~~~

i_wolf labhair dom as gaelige Posts: 2097 Joined: 2002-11-19

#35462 Posted on: 03/31/2005 07:28 AM I don't disagree that Intel heralded it as a way to get rid of x86 and Alpha. In fact I agree with your points... Intel got things terribly wrong. However we have known this for quite a while. However, I believe that the market, or lack of progress in segments of the market Intel thought the Itanium would be viable, has since dictated the areas Intel is forced to target the Itanium at now. Today this is very much a niche market, and like most niche markets sales are going to be much lower than those of high volume markets. The Inquirer and the Register have the same attitude towards any company or product in similar circumstances (remember their litte "war" with Sun a couple of years ago, their "skirmishes" with ATI and NVidia, etc.). Personally, I'll take a site that is "biased" against big corporations over 1000 sites that are ready to lick the ass of any company that sends a few free samples their way, any day. And when that site actually has news (as opposed to copies of press releases), the choice becomes even simpler. I enjoy the Inquirer and the Register, I read both every day. And usually they are first on the scene with IT news. However I get tired reading negative post after negative post about the Itanium on the reg/inq. I and the world at large knows and has known for the past few years that Intel got their predictions on the Itanium wrong. Fine. Why go on and on and on about it years later. It just gets tiring. That article linked to was talking about predictions that had been made over 4 years earlier, and these predictions were flaunted as if they had been made by Intel in the first place. They are actually predictions from an outside company being made out as if Intel missed their predicted sales figures. Well they did miss those sales firgures, but they weren't even Intel's predictions in the first place! I think thats bad journalism... not consistantly bad journalism but bad journalism certainly for this article in question. Absolutely Sun got a bashing, as did SCO and Apple (in each case rightly highlighting their indiscretions to the consumer or silly business practices as the case may be). SGI's Tezro and Fuel are MIPS-based machines (R16000 that is). Yup that right and thats exactly why I mentioned them as well since they are also expensive machines using a niche architecture. But then there's betting on the wrong horse and soon SGI will we the only kid in the sandbox, playing with the Itanium. To be honest I don't really know what options SGI had/have open to them. Unfortunately MIPS ran out of steam a while ago and certainly there hasn't been any major technical developments on the platform for a while. I guess they could have used IBM Power but IBM have always competed with them for supercomputers/clusters so politically that would be ruled out of the question. On paper Itanium does have fantastic performance (again back to the on paper versus real world argument).... It may or may not turn work out for SGI. Certainly it is a bit of gamble but they never did sell to high volume commodity markets that x86 would service. To end on a positive note, I'll be happy to buy me a sweet $300 4-cpu Tezro from e-bay in a couple of years and re-discover what real computing on a real computer running a real OS was all about. Can't run UNIX on an IMSAI, can't you? I bought an old O2 SGI O2 a few years ago for next to nothing! Fantastic machine and was way ahead of its time during the day! Hung like a donkey. Go like a horse!

rmn oh my, it's huge! Posts: 6013 Joined: 2002-01-26

#35463 Posted on: 03/31/2005 11:05 AM Originally posted by i_wolf That article linked to was talking about predictions that had been made over 4 years earlier, and these predictions were flaunted as if they had been made by Intel in the first place. They are actually predictions from an outside company being made out as if Intel missed their predicted sales figures. Well they did miss those sales firgures, but they weren't even Intel's predictions in the first place! I think thats bad journalism... not consistantly bad journalism but bad journalism certainly for this article in question. The Inquirer is more of a "technology" site, the Register is more of a "market" site. A lot of people and a lot of companies invest (and often lose) a lot of money due to the "predictions" that "anallists"... sorry, I mean analysts, pull out of their asse... I mean, out of thin air (or, more often than not, that jump into their mouths straight from some company's wallet... I mean, PR department). Exposing that is a good thing, IMO. If the (in)accuracy of predictions made 4 years ago is not considered relevant, then why are these firms spending (and charging) millions doing research to come up with 4-year predictions? To quote Mike Magee (and how can you not trust someone that looks like this), "we think we should be told". RMN ~~~

Pariah SMP Newbie Posts: 31 Joined: 2001-08-16

#35464 Posted on: 03/31/2005 11:45 AM If the (in)accuracy of predictions made 4 years ago is not considered relevant, then why are these firms spending (and charging) millions doing research to come up with 4-year predictions? You're missing the point that is being made. Uncovering bad predictions is fine, but that is NOT what this article is doing. If that was their intention, the article should have been titled, "IDC makes retarded prediction that was way off." But no, as is their wont, they post garbage about Intel not coming close to reaching someone else's bogus prediction, while making no indication at all in the title, that Intel had nothing at all to do with 14Billion prediction. The Register trashed the wrong company. I don't see why anyone reads either the Register or the Inq. They are both awful news sites that simply throw darts at the wall hoping they'll hit something once in a while and try to stir up controversy in the process by often just posting irresponsible and inaccurate articles like the one linked above. Intel was not in the wrong when they planned and developed Itanium. AMD came along and screwed it up by releasing the technologically inferior patchwork bandaid known as x86-64. Cheaper and more familiar is not always the best route to take. AMD slowed down progress of the whole market by releasing x86-64. We're going to have to get rid of x86 eventually, and the move to IA-64 was the best opportunity to date to make that happen. I'm certainly no Intel lover either, all my machines are AMD based except for my laptop, but reality is what it is.

LRSeriesIII Aspiring Rocket Scientist Posts: 1128 Joined: 2002-08-29

#35465 Posted on: 03/31/2005 12:32 PM Originally posted by Pariah But no, as is their wont, they post garbage about Intel not coming close to reaching someone else's bogus prediction, while making no indication at all in the title, that Intel had nothing at all to do with 14Billion prediction. Just a little nitpick, but I did not see anything indicating that Intel had nothing to do with the $14 billion prediction or the $28 billion prediction. These predictions came from IDC, but there is not indication that I have seen of what, if any, part in those predictions Intel played. Just like you cannot somehow assume that because IDC put out the numbers Intel believed them, you also cannot assume that because IDC put out the numbers Intel did not have anything to do with them. Originally posted by Pariah Intel was not in the wrong when they planned and developed Itanium. AMD came along and screwed it up by releasing the technologically inferior patchwork bandaid known as x86-64. Cheaper and more familiar is not always the best route to take. AMD slowed down progress of the whole market by releasing x86-64. We're going to have to get rid of x86 eventually, and the move to IA-64 was the best opportunity to date to make that happen. Let me get this straight, the market, by embracing x86-64, is slowing itself down? If it is the case that sales of x86-64 systems are reducing sales of Itanium systems, and I am not claiming that it is but rather merely taking what you have said, then does that not mean that the market in fact would rather have x86-64 than Itanium? I am sorry, but it seems a little arrogant to run in screaming "No! You see, all these stupid people buy product A, but I know better, and what they should be buying is product B. Curse you, manufacturer of product A, for providing an alternative to the vastly superior product B." Welcome to the free market. ->Computers ->Folding for team 3074

Pariah SMP Newbie Posts: 31 Joined: 2001-08-16

#35466 Posted on: 03/31/2005 01:06 PM These predictions came from IDC, but there is not indication that I have seen of what, if any, part in those predictions Intel played. You just said it yourself. We know for a fact these predictions came from IDC, and there is no evidence provided that Intel had anything to do with them. So why should we assume that Intel had something to do with them? Even if they were consulted on them, I can guarantee you Intel didn't tell IDC we expect $14 billion in sales in 2004, and IDC said, "OK, we'll run with that and use that as our prediction." I am sorry, but it seems a little arrogant to run in screaming "No! You see, all these stupid people buy product A, but I know better, and what they should be buying is product B. Curse you, manufacturer of product A, for providing an alternative to the vastly superior product B." Absolutely not, you completely misunderstood that as well as incorrectly defined free market. I am not saying I know which is superior while no one else does. I'm saying I know which one is superior and so does everyone else, but the free market has intentionally chosen the inferior product knowing it is inferior in the pursuit of money. x86-64 is undoutedly cheaper to implement now because it isn't as radical a change as IA64, and won't require a complete overhaul of the systems everyone uses today. So while it is inferior, it's not nearly as risky from a financial standpoint in the near term. The free market isn't about the best product, or what's best for the consumer. The free market is about one thing, money, and as soon as possible please. Welcome to the real free market.

2CPU.com » News » March 2005 » Itanium sales fall $13.4bn shy of $14bn forecast