Itaniwhat?

"How's that grizzled veteran of high-end computing Itanium panning out?"

Ask SGI and Nasa, who just signed a deal for a nice little Linux-based supercomputer, as reported right here on El Reg:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/06/sgi_moon_nasa/

In contrast with some of the earlier IA64 supercomputers, which were based on free Itanium funded by Intel, this deal is Itanium-free.

Q: "Is Itanium in the black?"

A: "... increased profitability ..."

You don't have to be a financial genius, or an Intel shareholder, to work out that Intel money spent on Itanium would have been, and would still be, more profitably spent on Xeon. Unless of course HP (as noted in the article, the only surviving Itanium customer of note) are paying a fortune for access to Itanium, and passing that ransom cost straight on to their captive HP-UX and VMS customers, thus supporting Itanium's "increased profitability", at least while it lasts.