New Intel chips set to clash

Intel plans to pilot its McKinley chip this year for general release early in 2002, raising further doubts about the fate of its previous Itanium processor, Merced.

McKinley is Intel's big hope for the server and enterprise range, and analysts say many businesses may wait for its arrival rather than upgrade to Merced, the first 64bit chip, which finally ships this year.

McKinley was demonstrated for the first time at the Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, running on HP-UX, Linux and the latest 64bit test version of Windows XP.

McKinley offers significant advances over Merced, including greater bus bandwidth and a level three cache integrated directly into the chip, says Intel executive vice president and general manager, Paul Otellini.

"It represents the convergence of all the major operating systems in the server space. As a result, we have a very strong-performing chip," he said.

The McKinley chip can use all the software previously developed and optimised for Merced, Otellini claimed. It will go into pilot production later this year, with full platform release in 2002. Otellini added that despite many delays, Merced was still on course to ship in the next quarter.

Intel claims that its Itanium architecture is the most significant development since the 386 processor was introduced in 1985, boasting high-end scalability, reliability and availability.

Analysts fear businesses will see Merced as merely a developmental platform, and won't implement Itanium until McKinley comes to market.

"The question is, will there be a need for Merced or will users wait for McKinley? By the time McKinley comes out, it will be more of a proven solution," said Pia Rieppo, principal analyst at Gartner.

"The people on the edge of enterprise computing are most interested in Merced, while the mainstream is waiting for McKinley," she added.

Intel claims to have an 85 per cent server market share with 28 per cent growth year-on-year, but a recent report from researcher IDC says it needs to implement stronger marketing strategies for its server products to avoid losing market share.

"Intel faces considerable challenges going into 2001," said research manger of IDC's European enterprise server group, Thomas Meyer. "It needs to make a big success of IA64 and must concentrate on the roadmaps for IA32."

Compaq announced last year that it would bypass initial versions of Itanium and move straight to the second chip. McKinley was co-developed with Compaq's competitor, Hewlett Packard.

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