Gee, and it was just the other day that we were talking to that nice Mr. Reger, the CTO of Fujitsu Siemens, who took exception to our story a couple of weeks ago about Fujitsu snubbing Sun for Intel.

Perish the thought, even for a minute, he said, that Fujitsu's devotion and fidelity to Sparc and Solaris and Sun would diminish one iota simply because it's betting its next-generation high-end machines on Intel and Xeon and Itanium largely running Linux and some Windows (CSN No 484).

Ah, but now, Mike Fister, the general manager of Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group, has waded into the discussion.

Mr. Fister told the Intel Developers Forum Thursday that Fujitsu was abandoning Sparc in any future designs and planned to migrate all its systems to Intel and that Sparc would disappear from Fujitsu's roadmap by 2005, the year after the first new Intel machines are due.

Wherein lies Mr. Reger's problem. If Mr. Fister speaks true, Mr. Reger and his colleagues have two years to kill waiting for the new boxes and a lot of dead-end systems on their hands.

Taking Mr. Reger's part was Fujitsu VP of product marketing Richard McCormack. Mr. McCormack said Fujitsu expects to get five more years out of its Sparc-based PrimePower line based on customer demand.

• Fujitsu Siemens Says Its Opteron Box Is Ready