Linux server shipments to double next year

As x86 overtakes RISC

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Servers, 15th November 2002 21:45 GMT

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Linux will provide the brightest hope for server manufacturers in the next year, according to Gartner-Dataquest's crystal ball.

The analyst firm reckons that although the server market will only grow by 1 percent, Linux shipments will double to almost $4 billion, or 9 per cent of the market. The OS will expand into telecomms, and further into web applications.

Gartner-Dataquest also reckons that x86-based servers will pip RISC in revenue terms for the first time. Analyst Jeffrey Hewitt predicts the RISC business will be worth $18.1 billion while Intel servers will top $20 billion.

Naturally Intel is cock-a-hoop at the prediction. But there's little good news for Itanium, which will fail to make a significant market impact, and Intel doesn't have an evolutionary route to 64bits for its vast x86 user base.

Yamhill is dead, and Microsoft killed it, according to the most recent rumors. ®

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