HP launches Itanium systems

N Suresh

SINGAPORE: Taking the computing technologies to the next level,

Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday launched its next generation Itanium processor-based

systems and servers to provide the world's fastest floating point performance.

The processor, next line of Pentiums, was co-developed by Intel and HP, in an

alliance that was first floated in June 1994.

"It is a new revolution in computing paradigm. This is making of a new

chapter, as this will provide the most comprehensive solutions to enterprise

computing worldwide," said Intel’s (Asia-Pacific) director of product

marketing and business management Chak Wong, during the Pan Asia launch of the

Itanium-based systems.

The Itanium family of processor has the widest industry support, barring

rival Sun Microsystems, and is based on the next generation IA-64, the 64-bit

computing architecture from Intel, and on Explicit Parallel Instruction

Computing (EPIC). Though co-developed by Intel and HP in a sever-year

partnership, the processor is made available to all vendors as part of HP's

focus on open standards and its new service-oriented approach to defray high

development costs.

HP believes that its association with Intel will give it the first move

advantage in pushing the systems. Besides, it has got its service and

maintenance organizations working closely in the past seven years ready with

customer centric solutions.

HP's chief marking officer, Roy Vandoorrn said the firm is launching three

new servers and workstations immediately. The HP workstation i2000, a 2-way

Itanium system, will start shipping on June 11 worldwide. The HP server rx4610,

a 4-way server, will be rolled out in June-end and the rx9610 and a 16-way

server by August.

Mike Muller, vice president and GM, said HP has set up a wide network of

partner technology access centers in Tokyo, Bangalore, Seoul and Sydney, besides

Hong Kong and Singapore, to help customers migrate their existing 32-bit

applications based on all operating systems to the new Itanium-based systems.

With the support of leading software vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, CA

and others, enterprises can protect their investments and upgrade their current

applications to the new systems easily. According to information available here,

the HP systems has the world's fastest SPECfp2000 result with a score of 715. It

was achieved on a HP Itanium server, configured with two 800 MHz processors with

4 MB cache using Microsoft Windows Whistler 64-bit operating system. This

benchmark is an indicator of the performance of applications that rely heavily

on floating point calculations.

HP has a considerable market share in the enterprises and scientific

institutions that require high performance computing. "HP is confident that

the Itanium processor family is the future of computing and it will motivate the

developer community and early-adapter corporate developers," Muller said.

"By providing flexibility to choose various operating systems, and

protection for their information technology investments, we will accelerate the

adoption of Itanium processor-based applications and demonstrate HP's leadership

in the future of computing technology," he added.

HP allows early buyers to use operating systems such as Windows and Linux. It

will also makes available the HP-UX, a 64-bit OS that provides compatibility of

customers' binary software applications as they make a transition from the

current RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) to the Itanium processors

architecture.

This apart, HP will also offer early adapters and customers consulting,

education, software, financing, services and support to ease transition to the

Itanium family. These services are designed to help with planning, migration,

support and implementation on HP's Itanium systems.