Itanium or Itanic?

Reports are beginning to surface in Silicon Valley that Intel’s forthcoming

Itanium chip may have hit a technical iceberg that could further delay the

arrival of the chip, currently slated for late this fall. A high-level marketing

executive at a Silicon Valley computer maker, told this week that the Itanium

chip his company had obtained had badly crashed during a standard benchmark

test.

"The chip just hung," the official said referring to the term

describing a computer getting stuck and endlessly spinning its digital wheels.

The executive also cited another major computer maker allegedly returning the

$1,800 sample Itanium chips to Intel following failing test results.

The Itanium, the first of Intel’s IA-64 architecture, was first developed

under the code name "Merced." The chip is already two years late in

coming to the market. Some analysts have begun to wonder if the Itanium will

prove a repeat for Intel which, 10 years ago, tried to launch a RISC-based i960

line of processors for high-end computers. The chip failed to attract customers

and ended up mostly in embedded applications.