Options increase for 64bit kit

Intel's 64bit Itanium processor faces competition from Xeon and Opteron chips. So which hardware will corporates buy?

The launch of Intel's 64bit Xeon EM64T chip in June, to compete with AMD's Opteron processors, has further undermined demand for Intel's 64bit Itanium chips, according to many analysts.

Opteron and EM64T both add 64bit extensions to industry-standard x86 processors so the chips can run existing 32bit software alongside new 64bit applications - unlike Itanium, which is designed primarily for new 64bit applications.

Rakesh Kumar of analyst firm Meta Group said, "My view is that the Itanium has desperate problems." He said that even major backers of Itanium, such as HP, are likely to find the technology a hard sell for four- and eight-processor systems, because EM64T and Opteron chips provide performance similar to that of Itanium, but offer an easier path to 64bit computing.

However, Intel's European strategic marketing manager, Alan Priestley, argued that Itanium has a promising future in hardware to replace aging Risc processor systems. For example, HP's Superdome was initially sold only with PA-Risc chips, but now HP also offers Itanium options.

Priestley added that chips such as Opteron and EM64T will not be as appealing as Itanium for 64bit computing in the long term, because they will offer inferior reliability and scalability. "What we'll see is all 32bit processors [like Opteron and Xeon] being able to address more than 4GB but it doesn't fundamentally change the nature of the processor. It will still be 32bit, and still used in the same applications."

Priestley said there will be less overlap between Itanium and the hybrid 32bit/ 64bit chips than some analysts suggest - even where 64bit versions of business applications can run on Xeon or Opteron platforms. "The platform capabilities [of these hybrid processors] don't deliver the reliability or scalability," he argued. This last claim is the centrepiece of Intel's argument in favour of Itanium, but critics say that Intel has provided little evidence of Itanium's superior reliability or scalability.

Recent supercomputer benchmarks suggest that Xeon systems can offer good scalability through clustering. But Priestley argued that firms will prefer to consolidate on large monolithic systems rather than clusters, and predicted they will choose Itanium systems for this purpose.

"We see firms that have [clustered systems] now [moving] back towards a smaller number of high-performance systems, because what you save in hardware on clustering, you pay with increased management costs," said Priestley. "There is value in having platforms that scale well and deliver increased performance as you add more processors. It is not just related to more memory, it's down to the core architecture. Many of the applications running on the largest systems are not architected to scale out [on clustered systems]."

However, a growing number of business-critical applications that have in the past run on Risc and Unix systems are being moved to Xeon-based platforms running Linux. "Linux is gaining really strong momentum both in Europe and the US," said Kumar. "And the real clincher is Microsoft - which is not endorsing Itanium in any meaningful way." Microsoft said it wants to maintain a common code base for Opteron, EM64T and Itanium. This could make Opteron and EM64T a more attractive option for 64bit applications and increase their overlap with Itanium.

Intel's Priestley predicted that Itanium will increasingly replace Risc chips at the high end. "Firms get more capability with Itanium," he argued. "And [computer makers] don't have to invest in processor development or the overall systems architecture and operating system.

Priestly added, "[Computer manufacturers] may have a common platform, but firms can run the operating system they want on it. HP, for example, has a long-term strategy to merge all its architectures onto Itanium-based solutions."

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