As close as we're going to get to an official OBITUARY for the Itanic, until they actually release the PR that nobody will notice that says they're shutting down the lines, maybe in a year or two.
But for practical real-world purposes, THIS IS IT RIGHT HERE.
Note especially Dave House's comment. Dave House was INTC's Itanium DRIVER when it started up.
--QS
Edit: "We were actually too close." <GGGGG>
Intel and H-P End Alliance On Itanium Chip
By DON CLARK and PUI-WING TAM
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 16, 2004; Page B2
Intel Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. have ended their chip-development alliance, a costly, decadelong effort that failed to meet all of its ambitious goals.
But both companies pledged their continued commitment to the Itanium chip technology that was the focus of the alliance. H-P, in fact, vowed to invest $3 billion to step up computer and software development associated with Itanium, which is the foundation for three separate H-P server lines.
Under a new agreement, Intel will hire an H-P technical team in Fort Collins, Colo., that designed several models of Itanium. The deal means Intel will take over all future Itanium development, a separate strain of technology from the x86 design used in Intel chips for personal computers and high-volume server systems.
Financial terms weren't disclosed. Several hundred H-P employees are expected to join Intel.
The Itanium is used mainly in high-end servers, competing with chips such as Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Sparc and International Business Machines Corp.'s PowerPC products. Though Intel has marketed the chip to many computer makers, H-P accounts for the overwhelming majority of shipments at the moment.
Indeed, some computer makers appear to have been reluctant to commit too heavily to the machine, out of fear H-P had an inside track on information about future technology development. The new arrangement is designed partly to address that perception, H-P and Intel officials said.
"We were actually too close," said Rich Marcello, who runs HP's business-critical systems group. "This will level the playing field."
H-P isn't spelling out exactly how much of the $3 billion is new investment and how much already had been allocated to Itanium-based projects. But Mr. Marcello said the company is definitely stepping up spending to encourage the development of more software for such computers. H-P also plans to set up a design center in Singapore to develop lower-cost servers based on the chip.
Intel also has continued to talk up Itanium's successes, including the chip's growing popularity in some of the world's largest supercomputers. Richard Dracott, general manager of Intel's enterprise marketing and planning group, argued that the chip has received "critical mass" in attacking high-end computer markets, while the company continues to promote its Xeon chip for high-volume applications.
Intel and H-P had much broader ambitions for Itanium when the joint effort was announced in June 1994. The chip was expected to first be applied in high-end computing applications, and later to be used in workstations, high-volume servers and even PCs, possibly succeeding the ubiquitous x86 design altogether.
The Itanium didn't become available until 2001, at least two years late, and didn't run popular software applications as well as expected. IDC, a market-research firm, estimates that only about 8,000 Itanium systems were sold for each of the past three quarters.
"I think history will record Itanium as a failure," says David House, a former senior Intel executive who approved the original project.
Itanium also has been affected by the rise of Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Opteron chip, which competes with both Itanium and Xeon chips. Though Itanium has some advantages in running high-end software, Sun, H-P and IBM are using Opteron in low-end servers that are likely to get more sophisticated over time.
"As time goes on, we see less and less of those benefits [of Itanium] being relevant," said Ben Williams, vice president of AMD's commercial server and workstation business.
Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com1 and Pui-Wing Tam at pui-wing.tam@wsj.com2 |
