HP to adopt AMD's Opteron in servers

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re: Can HP kill off three in a row?: For what it's worth, killing off the Itanium may be the wakeup call Intel needs. The Itanium chip, while innovative, isn't directed toward the mass market. I don't mean the average Joe Consumer who wants to get on the Internet - I mean typical corporations who need servers. When HP/Intel designed the Itanium, they basically made a HUGE jump by going directly to 64 bit without much of any inherent support for the HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of 32 bit apps on the market. Investing in a Itanium server would require some immediate and serious investment in software. You can't easily delay the costs by buying the server now, and upgrading apps as needed - you pretty much have to buy the whole package all at once in order to see any return on your performance investment.

And let's not forget that your choice for software is rather limited - Windows 64 bit version hasn't shipped and won't till the end of this year. You're stuck with Linux and DB2. Not much help if your apps require some flavor of Windows NT server and say, MS SQL.

AMD's approach - by including the 32 bit and 64 bit capabilities in one chip means that the average company can spread their investment out over a year or two without taking any hits in performance.

Given the above, I say HP is making a smart move by adopting the Opteron chip. When the software catches up to the hardware, then perhaps, the Itanium may have a chance to compete on an even keel. Until then...; Posted by: Wolfie2K3 Posted on: 01/27/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use