This chart shows IDC's forecasts of customer spending on Itanium machines as well as the comparatively tiny actual spending in 2004.
For example, in June 2000 (light green line) IDC predicted that Itanium server revenue would gradually climb to $25 billion by 2004.
Hewlett-Packard's PA-RISC chip, which Itanium was designed to supplant, still is used more often.
At 1.7 million, shipments of servers using lower-end x86 chips far outpace those of servers with higher-end chips.
Sales of servers with IBM's Power chip brought in 2.7 times more revenue than those with Intel's Itanium in the third quarter of this year.
Two years after Itanium launched, servers with the processor started making gains compared with those rival high-end products, according to figures from the chip's manufacturer Intel and research firm IDC.