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Itanium sales disappointing for Intel

Itanium sales have fallen short of Intel's expectations. Will next year's …

Intel kicked off its Intel Developer Forum yesterday with a Q-and-A session. One of the hot topics was the Itanium. In a somewhat surprising bit of candor, one Intel executive admitted that Itanium sales are falling short of expectations.

"Are we meeting the specific goals this year? Not to the aggressive levels we've set," Abhi Talwalkar, general manager of Intel's Enterprise Platform Group, said while answering questions after a speech at the Intel Developer Forum here.

While "big iron" Itanium sales have been strong, overall figures have disappointed primarily due to the increased popularity of less-expensive 64-bit x86 CPUs such as the Opteron and 64-bit Xeon. The price/performance ratio for x86-64 servers has turned out to be rather attractive, which works against the Itanium.

If it had been up to Intel, they would only be manufacturing one 64-bit server CPU. However, AMD forced their hand with AMD64 and its launch of the Opteron in April 2003. Since that time, the Opteron's popularity has grown as AMD single-handedly created a "budget" 64-bit server market. Intel's decision to sell a 64-bit Xeon was a necessary response to AMD, but some of its sales come at the expense of the Itanium. Intel is betting that the dual-core Itanium (Montecito) due out in 2005 with its power management and data error correction features will provide a boost to Itanium's sagging fortunes.

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Channel Ars Technica