Itanium 2 runs in direct competition with Sun UltraSparc processors, which are 64-bit and have been for years - which means there is plenty of software out there already taking advantage of them. Vincent Smith, European server advocate at IBM, a...
The emulation move is also likely to be more palatable to customers than 'Yamhill', an Intel project that sources have said is similar to AMD's 64-bit extensions to Intel's 32-bit design rather than the dramatic departure Itanium represents.
It's the first major system from IBM to support Intel's strategy of selling 64-bit Itanium processors for high-end servers requiring large amounts of memory, instead of the more conventional 32-bit Xeon chips.
These products run on all four of IBM's server lines and on machines built around Intel's Itanium and Xeon processors and AMD's Opteron processor. The deal means customers buying Sun servers with Intel or AMD x86 processors will be able to choose...
Sun is using a three-pronged chip strategy, while HP argues it will benefit from Intel's Itanium chips for higher-end servers. In addition, a customer buying Itanium servers can get them from multiple companies, whereas Power5 comes only from IBM.
AMD threw another wrench in the Itanium works with 64-bit x86 memory extensions in 2003, which along with a similar move by Intel in 2004 undermined one of the advantages Itanium had over x86 chips. HP said in a statement that its investment is...
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