The computer industry looked predictable six months ago. Since then there have been surprises in processors and technology that have changed the whole playing field. The largest changes have happened to Intel, the world's biggest processor maker. Intel Corp. was set to bring its new 90 nanometer Prescott chips into the market and had updated Itanium chips in the queue. AMD's Opteron chips were then becoming a major challenge for Intel, as they were both powerful and offered 64-bit extensions while still running 32-bit code very well. When Intel's prime partner with Itanium, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), brought Opteron systems to market, Intel announced it would supply 64-bit capability. On the Itanium side, IBM is taking its Power processor architecture to levels that are very competitive with Intel's Itanium. Intel's plan to dominate the high end processor market with its proprietary Itanium design now faces challenges from AMD below and IBM above. Sun Microsystems is another company in the throes of change. It has just cancelled its next planned processor, the UltraSparc V, in order to go with new multicore designs named Niagara and Rock. It has also extended its systems line to embrace AMD's Opteron and Linux while continuing to enhance the Solaris operating system. Meanwhile, IBM continues to push high-end system development, basing its systems on three classes of processors which are the x86 processors from Intel and AMD, and Itanium processors from Intel, the power architecture for p and e series and AS/400 and the Z series for mainframes. On the other hand, HP is standardizing on three lines of systems which are Proliant, the x86 class of systems from notebooks to 8P servers, Integrity, the Itanium and PA-RISC class of systems from 4P servers to 128 P Superdomes and NonStop, the ultra reliable systems, to be transitioned to Itanium, for companies where failures must not affect business.