Vendors endorse Itanium-inside products

Eight systems vendors demonstrated prototype servers and workstations based on Intel's forthcoming 64-bit Itanium processor at the chip giant's developer forum last week.

Eight systems vendors demonstrated prototype servers and workstations based on Intel's forthcoming 64-bit Itanium processor at the chip giant's developer forum last week.

Bull, Compaq, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, SGI and NEC unveiled servers and workstations running a mixture of operating systems and ebusiness related applications. The products will ship in the second half of this year.

Intel also promised to unveil new tools and developer information, including the IA64 developer's manual, which provides information on the complete programming environment, including application and system level architecture, IA64 instruction set, optimisation techniques, and other information to aid programmers in developing application software for the processor.

Kea Grilley, director of platform marketing at Intel, said: "IA64 and Itanium are this year's biggest track. We will be demonstrating the IA64 program and giving road map details on how to develop hardware and software on the platform."

She added that Intel would also detail the availability of Open Source Linux tools for IA64.

At the same time, the vendor claimed that users of server applications, such as business intelligence, enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management would benefit from Itanium's enhanced reliability, better performance and its ability to support a larger number of users.

Intel also said that the processor's floating point performance, large cache memory and high-bandwidth bus made it suitable for high-performance workstations such as those used for mechanical design automation, digital content creation, financial modelling and scientific and technical computing applications.