14 DAY TRIAL // With all the effort HP and Intel have been putting into assuring everyone that they aren't dropping the Itanium server platform, one would expect them to deliver some new product or another sooner instead of later, but this might very well not happen.
As far as the server market goes, one might say that there has been a fairly avid scandal of sorts going on.
Basically, Oracle said it was dropping support for the Intel Itanium platform and that those server chips wouldn't last much longer.
Intel and HP were quick to say otherwise and the latter was especially unpleased, to the point where it and its clients demanded that Oracle reconsider.
Then, other sorts of rumors began to emerge, like the one saying that Intel was moving Itanium engineers over to its division that works on the Xeon series of processors.
Now, X-bit Labs says that both Intel and HP might hold off on publicly updating the Itanium roadmap, even though Intel already said it would keep developing the chips for ten years.
Initial plans were to reveal post-Kittson chips later this month, with availability intended for 2014 or 2015, but HP is supposedly unsure about things now.
HP is, of course, still leaning towards supporting the platform for ten years, but with Oracle so determined to stay by its decision, it may very well fold and just go with Xeon, since it also deals in those processors.
That, on a hardware level, Xeon and Itanium aren't so different would definitely help with a transition, but the software side of things is a very different matter.
Meanwhile, the sources at the root of the report implied Intel might be intent on holding off an update on its plans until its analyst day in May.
All in all, whether HP and Intel like it or not, Oracle's decision definitely had consequences.