The problem is that space in data centers is expensive. If you can cram 280 700MHz Pentium servers in one cabinet, that's a lot of savings in rental.

Shades of Cubix!!

I understand the economics, but I think I just wasn't doing the math adequately over 1U rack servers -- 280 is certainly a lot even as compared to 84 (42 duals) and I read with interest Drakino's following notes on low power consumption CPUs...

Okey-dokey, that's a lot of CPUs, and I'll just allow that there will be lots of clustering applications where their disclaimers don't apply. I remember reading about the rendering farm (Alphas, sorry!) that the GGI house built for Titanic -- 200+ CPUs. I suppose you could fit the whole farm in one 42U rack on these blades. OK....

Still, no hot plug and not storage-oriented, so more of a CPU-density thing...

Re: DEC. Yeah, too bad as I have some relatives in MA who have suffered the Compaq takeover. Will somebody point me to a takeover/acquisition where the acquiring company integrated the acquisition well, didn't piss off the staff of the acquisition, and really leveraged what they bought? (No, I'm not trying to make a statement about SonicBLUE!). It just seems that most acquisitions are reactive and defensive in nature and, well, ....suck.