Itanium Will Survive Even Without Microsoft’s Support
In spite of rapid increase of performance and feature-set of x86 server microprocessors, Intel Corp. believes that IA64 micro-architecture and Itanium central processing units (CPUs) has long and bright future.
Intel recently launched its new Xeon EX platform that, for the first time, sports a number of reliability, availability and serviceability capabilities, which place it in line with more advanced Intel Itanium platforms. Microsoft Corp. was quick to react and said that the forthcoming Windows Server 2008 R2 would be the last OS to support Itanium. With such factors affecting Itanium, will this platform survive in the long term? Intel claims that yes!
“Windows represents less than 6% of current Itanium sales according to IDC's Q3 2009 server tracker report. Most Itanium users run Unix, specifically HP-UX. Those customers would argue that the combination of HP-UX and the Itanium platform represent a very formidable mission-critical solution, which many of the world's leading companies have chosen,” said Patrick Ward, an Intel spokesperson, who specializes on Itanium lineup of products.
