Intel is finally shipping the 64-bit Itanium

[Mark Hahn]

> will also always be a kludge. X86 has 20 years of baggage for legacy 
> support and also produce enormous amounts of heat as compared to RISC.

that's a nice sentiment.  but the only RISC that competes well with ia32
is the Alpha, which has never been known for running cool
(or being cheap, for that matter).

> Low cost RISC clusters will outperform any x86 mass-market OTS clusters. 

where are these low-cost RISC components available?

> RISC offers lower cost, smaller footprint, far less heat along with 
> higher fixed and floating point performance.

again, sounds great.  where's the beef?