The rumor mill is running at full speed with news of a secret project at Intel designed to keep pace with AMD should customers continue to ignore the Itanium processor. In short, it's Intel's answer to AMD's Hammer technology.

It appears there are two competing, divisive "camps" within Intel, split between the Itanium promoters in Santa Clara, California and x86 promoters in Hillsboro, Oregon. (Is this just healthy competition, or does it reflect an absence of strategic vision?)

Interesting sales figures on Itanium: in the first quarter they were available (May 2001 to September 2001), only 162 Itanium CPUs were sold (if you exclude a large special-purpose order by IBM).