On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, David Woyciesjes wrote:

[...]
> Yeah, you are quite right, but IIRC, the Itanium isn't quite in production
> yet, and 2 years seems like it might be enough time for Intel to pull off
> the switch, right?

They are already two years behind, adding another two years is probably
not on the top of their wish-list.
Also, software development for the Itanium have progressed quite a bit by
now. The companies doing that effort (among the Microsoft) would not be
amused if Intel dropped the processor now.
Finally, not even Intel can pull off a stunt like that. Everyone would
know it was an Alpha. A name switch is hardly enough to hide it.

Jason Thorpe is probably correct in assuming that they want access to the
brain power behind the Alphas. Also, I would assume a few of you remember
the intellectual property legal processing that DEC did against Intel a
few years ago. I would not be surprised if there are more rights here that
Intel wants to get their hands on.

Most of those intellectual properties came from VAX development by the
way. For a while DEC really pushed the frontier with the VAX, before they
decided to switch to RISC.

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol