HP has officially done away with the Transmeta CPU's that formerly powered its blade servers in favor of the newer low-power Athlon 64 CPUs, starting with their BC1500 line. HP's decision to use AMD processors was more or less known (or predicted), and HP's attempts to get a larger control of the blade market (dominated by IBM) have been more aggressive. As the article points out, Blade has been unpopular in the past as the idea of a "mainframe" is a bit backwards, though a Blade extends far beyond the concept of a dumb terminal, and is slowly gaining ground, especially in businesses, where the typical 3-year lifespan of a desktop computer is becoming more and more of a strain and an annoyance.