Itanium 2 test center opens in China
By CNET Asia Staff
Special to CNET News.com
March 26, 2003, 10:33 AM PT
To promote the Itanium 2 server processor in Asia-Pacific, Hewlett-Packard and Intel have opened a test center in Shanghai that will allow customers to try before buying. The center is the first in the Asia-Pacific region and the third worldwide. There are also centers in Cupertino, Calif., and Grenoble, France.
"The Solutions Centre spearheads Itanium advancement in Asia-Pacific," said Michael Muller, a general manager and vice president with HP Asia-Pacific. The HP Intel Solutions Centre focuses on Itanium development and, among other things, offers proof of concept testing, solution architecture and project support, vendor solution evaluation, certification and skill transfer.
It will also provide benchmarking, a crucial function for a relatively new chip yet to gain widespread acceptance. The Centre allows customers to test the processor on operating systems such as HP-UX (HP's own Unix variant), Microsoft Windows and the open-source Linux.
Despite its long and often controversial history, the Itanium family appears to be gaining momentum in the market. The first version, formerly code-named Merced, was delayed several times and offered only middling performance. It finally debuted in 2001, but sales were dismal.
Itanium 2, formerly McKinley, came out in July 2002 and was substantially different from the first Itanium. Analysts have given it fairly positive reviews and sales appear to be growing. Unisys, NEC, SGI, Fujitsu and IBM all plan high-end Itanium servers, but the first four of those don't occupy the first rank among server makers, and IBM's grander plans are built around its Power5 processor and its sequels.
news.com.com |
