Dell Computer has confirmed that it will start shipping servers
built with Intel's Itanium 2 chips, altering what has been at best
a lukewarm stance on the chip.
Despite being one of Intel's biggest partners, Dell had declined to
say whether or not it would bring out a server based on the chip,
citing a small number of sales for these types of systems as the
reason for its reluctance.
The 64-bit Itanium chip, however, has started to show signs of life
in the high-performance computing market, which appears to have
nudged Dell toward picking up the chip.
"Yes, we do now have an Itanium 2-based PowerEdge server on our
roadmap," said Dell spokesman Bruce Anderson. "It's not a matter of
if but when. Customer demand up to this point has not been broad,
but we have seen renewed interest in the last six months on high
performance clusters for this type of product."
Dell's major rival, Hewlett-Packard, has been the most vocal
Itanium supporter, as HP looks for the chip to replace its 64-bit
PA-RISC and Alpha chips. IBM has also made a late move towards the
Itanium 2 with its servers based on the processor expected later
this year.
The Itanium processor is Intel's answer for high-end servers that
power the most demanding applications in both the scientific
community and business world. While the chip has shown strong
performance in benchmarks, it still lacks much of the software
needed for it to challenge the reduced instruction set computing
(RISC)-based servers from HP, IBM and Sun.
The absence of a 64-bit operating system from Microsoft is a key
piece of missing software and was probably the main reason Dell
delayed its Itanium 2 servers, according to Illuminata analyst
Gordon Haff.
Microsoft said that its 64-bit Windows .net Server 2003 operating
system had been delayed yet again and would not arrive until April.
Dell may wait until the release of the OS to bring out its Itanium
2 servers, according to Haff.
"It wouldn't surprise me to see something rolling out at that time,
but it makes sense for them to lay the ground work now," he
said.
Dell has also been rumoured to be looking at Advanced Micro
Devices' 64-bit server processor, codenamed Opteron.
"We are very encouraged to see the innovations that are going on,
not only by our current supplier but also future, potential
suppliers," said Dell chairman and chief executive officer Michael
Dell.