14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like the recent string of rumors and reports surrounding a certain server platform developed by Intel prompted said company to step up and quell any suspicions that it might drop support for it.
While Intel may draw a large part of its fame from the consumer market, it has many hardware products serving the business, enterprise and industrial sectors as well.
The server market is especially packed full of CPUs based on its technologies, although some platforms seem to be less popular than others.
Not long ago, it was discovered that the Itanium mission-critical platform had lost the support of one of the biggest makers of server software solutions.
Specifically, Oracle decided to stop supporting new iterations of the Itanium processors, since it plans to promote the SPARC it got when it acquired Sun Microsystems.
With HP as the only major player still prompting the architecture, one might have thought that Intel wouldn't keep working on it for much longer.
Apparently, this assumption was a false one, as the world-class CPU developer made an official statement in which it reaffirms its decision to keep developing such units.
“Intel’s work on Intel Itanium processors and platforms continues unabated with multiple generations of chips currently in development and on schedule,” said Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel Corporation.
“We remain firmly committed to delivering a competitive, multi-generational roadmap for HP-UX and other operating system customers that run the Itanium architecture.”
Of course, even with the upcoming 8-core, 32nm-based Poulson chip, the future doesn't look so promising now that RedHat and even Microsoft stopped making software for Itanium.
This means that HP really might end up drawing all the customers still sticking to the products, since it said it would continue to push forward and, being the top PC maker that it is, may just manage to keep the chips going for a while longer.