INDUSTRY

For most IT buyers, clock rate alone will no longer be the primary factor in determining which microprocessor based 64-bit server (IBM, HP, Dell, Sun) to buy, claims IT industry analysis firm "Clabby Analytics." In a new report -- "Performance-on-the-Die: The 64-bit Server Report" (available at http://www.bitpipe.com/detail/RES/1078762140_383.html) -- Clabby Analytics describes in-depth the comparative differences between AMD Opteron, IBM POWER, Intel Itanium, and Sun UltraSPARC 64-bit architectures -- and the respective market positioning of each product offering. A chart comparing functionality of 64 bit servers is available for download at www.valleyviewventures.com. "Our research shows that there are significant differences between the 64- bit microprocessors offered by AMD, IBM, Intel, and Sun" says Joe Clabby. "IT buyers need to understand these differences in order to make informed decisions on which platforms to choose to meet their enterprise's strategic computing needs." Clabby states the key differences can be found in: *Which operating environments each chip supports; *Clock/frequency speed; *Whether the microprocessor uses a switch or bus architecture; *Ability to multi-thread; and the *Availability of multiple-cores. When comparing microprocessors, Clabby Analytics found: *Intel's Itanium is well positioned because it can run Windows .NET and Unix/Linux J2EE environments -- and it has solid parallelization and multi-core plans; *IBM is positioning its pSeries as the strategic platform of choice for 64-bit Linux and Unix -- and its POWER is already capable of dual core and chip-level threading. *Sun has an aggressive roadmap to bring multi-threading and multi-core capabilities to market (but UltraSPARC sales volumes are declining and Sun may face a volume manufacturing disadvantage in the 64-bit market as that market moves toward commoditization). *AMD's microprocessor is not really positioned to go head-to-head with IBM's POWER, Sun's UltraSPARC, or Intel's Itanium architectures (instead, IA-32 is Opteron's target). Clabby Analytics also found that AMD's 64-bit processor roadmap is "vague."