

A Decade Later, Intel’s Itanium Chip Makes a Profit - asnyder
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/a-decade-later-intels-itanium-chip-makes-a-profit/

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mtarnovan
I really don't think they broke even. If you're putting a title like that on
an article, I at least expect to see some hard numbers in it, not just a vague
quotes ("The Itanium business is now profitable"). So let's see numbers first.

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ramanujan
Profitability is a lower baseline. The real metric is opportunity cost. What
else could have been done with an investment that took a decade to break even?

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BearOfNH
I agree _opportunity cost_ is a better metric, but there's yet more to it. In
another 10 years, Itanium might surpass x86 as the old architecture hits the
wall and the new continues to speed up (if in fact it does).

It's almost a matter of insurance -- Intel can't afford to be stuck at ~3.1416
GHz :-) while competing architectures continue to improve. If in fact they
can.

