Shipments of servers powered by x86 processors will not grow as fast as previously forecasted, but x86 will remain the dominant chip design, IDC said in a report Tuesday.
The market researcher has scaled back unit growth forecasts for x86-based servers, citing the market transition to multicore processors and demand for virtualization. Both technologies give servers more computing power, thereby reducing demand for new servers.
IDC forecasts that worldwide unit demand for x86 servers will grow by just 39 percent between 2006 and 2010, down from an earlier forecast of 61 percent. This means that IDC has trimmed 4.5 million unit shipments and $2.4 billion in revenue from its forecast for 2006 to 2010.
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