Intel to Oracle: That's Okay, We'll Have a Great Itanium Party Without You

Chipmaker Intel just fired off a response to Oracle’s announcement that it plans to cease developing software to run on systems using the Itanium server chip. As you might expect, Intel is reaffirming its commitment to the architecture and slapping down Oracle’s suggestion that Itanium is nearing the end of its life.

“Intel’s work on Intel Itanium processors and platforms continues unabated with multiple generations of chips currently in development and on schedule,” Intel CEO Paul Otellini said in a brief statement issued just a few minutes ago. “We remain firmly committed to delivering a competitive, multi-generational roadmap for HP-UX and other operating system customers that run the Itanium architecture.”

As I mentioned earlier, Intel has two new generations of the Itanium chip in the pipeline. The current generation was known by the codename Tukwila. The next, which is generally expected next year, is codenamed Poulson. It’s an eight-core Itanium that will be built on Intel’s 32-nanometer manufacturing process, and Intel says it will double the performance of the current Tukwila generation. Beyond Poulson lies Kittson, about which few details are known. Otellini said it’s an “officially committed roadmap product” that is in active development. He also plans to say a lot more about it in his keynote at the Intel Developer’s Forum in Beijing next month. So, take that Oracle.

Update: And now finally Hewlett-Packard, which is for the most part the only company making servers using Itanium chips, has responded to all this.

In a statement issued just moments ago, David Donatelli, HP’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of its HP Enterprise Servers, Storage, and Networking group said the following”

“We are shocked that Oracle would put enterprises and governments at risk while costing them hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity.”