HP close to dumping Itanium

Move comes after similar moves from Oracle, Ubuntu and Red Hat to name a few…

HP (NYSE:HPQ) is adding x86-blades to its existing Itanium systems, but at the same time also adding some features from its HP UX to Windows. This will allow easier migration from Itanium to x86 for its customers.

HP is about the only customer that Intel has left for its very expensive chip. Oracle stopped development earlier this year and that followed other companies like Microsoft, Ubuntu and Red Hat.

You can view the move by HP as either a success or a failure for Intel.  If you look at it from an X86-perspective then it is certainly a success showing exactly what the x86-archtitechture is capable of, if implemented correctly.

Viewed from an Itanium perspective it is a massive failure. Intel has had to make numerous design changes and compromises over the years and dump new technologies like Foxton that never worked in the first place.

All this news came out during the quarterly HP conference call that also revealed that HP will not consider any merges or acquisitions the next 12 months but instead will concentrate on its core business including a strengthening of the R&D operations.

Itanium is not the only chip architecture losing out to x86. Also RISC based chips are under severe pressure – with the PowerPC from IBM being the notable exception.S|A

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