The plans, which apply to the next-generation "Madison" and "Montecito" models in Intel's Itanium chip line, illustrate that HP is able to expand on the basic processors that Intel offers, decreasing its reliance on the chipmaker.
In January, the company debuted its Altix 3000 system with 64 Intel Itanium 2 processors that runs Linux. SGI has unveiled its Origin 350 Unix server, a descendant of the two-year-old Origin 300 that has more new processors, additional memory...
Its xSeries servers use Intel's Xeon and Itanium processors, its pSeries and iSeries use the Power4 processor and its predecessors, while its zSeries mainframe line uses a different IBM-designed processor.
In addition, it expects to release systems with 128 HP PA-RISC 8800 processors or 128 Intel Itanium processors in coming months. However, because IBM's system uses 32 processors compared to 64 for the Superdome, owners of machines with the IBM...
However, the software support for the Itanium 2 processor is still limited and IT managers have to be aware of transition and certification costs in moving to the new chip platform, according to Meta Group analyst Brian Richardson.
And in the most recent Top500 list, 45 per cent of machines used Intel's Xeon and 12 per cent used Intel's Itanium 2. Windows spread hand in hand with the same processors from Intel that became the most widely used chip for running Linux.