HP goes twos-up on Itanium chips

Beginning in 2004, Hewlett-Packard will pair up future Itanium chips so that twice the number can be shoehorned into a computer.

The plans, which apply to the next-generation "Madison" and "Montecito" models in Intel's Itanium chip line, illustrate that HP is able to expand on the basic processors that Intel offers, decreasing its reliance on the chipmaker.

Processors are the single most important component of HP's future servers.

HP chief technology officer Shane Robison said the double-whammy chips will enable HP processors to leapfrog the performance of IBM's Power processor family.

IBM's current Power4 processor was the first "dual-core" server chip, taking advantage of an approach in which two processors are etched into a single slice of silicon. HP, Intel and Sun Microsystems are pursuing their own dual-core chips, but HP wanted something that worked like an actual dual-core Itanium earlier than Intel plans to release one.

HP plans to use this dual-chip packaging technology - in which two separate processors share the same data pathway connecting them to the rest of a computer - from low-end to high-end systems, said John Miller, director of HP server marketing.

Miller said: "We feel it's important to be in the marketplace with a dual-core implementation, even though it's not exactly that. Everybody in the industry is going to be there."

Mike Fister, general manager of Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group, said in September that Intel plans to make dual-core Itanium processors by "the middle of the decade".

HP developed the idea behind the Itanium processors, but Intel is taking the lead in the designing and building of the chips. HP has begun moving all its server lines to the Itanium family, and the double-chip packages will permit the company to offer more powerful servers, sooner.

Insight 64 analyst Nathan Brookwood said: "What that gets them is the ability to take any platform they design and put twice as many processors in it as they otherwise would have been able to," said. "It's very impressive."

Building extremely powerful Itanium servers sends a signal to prospective buyers that HP is serious about the product, but high-end Itanium servers aren't expected to be in widespread use anytime soon. The chips require software to be overhauled before it will work well on the new systems, and customers are conservative about making radical changes to servers that run critical tasks such as reconciling bank balances.

Stephen Shankland writes for News.com