Oracle earlier said it will stop developing for Intel Itanium and its exclusive IA64 architecture since the architecture hasn’t long to live now. HP on the other hand, who is a key partner to Intel on Itanium says the very opposite and that Itanium has at least 10 years to go. Oracle continues to defend its position.
We repoed last month that HP was suing Oracle for the decision to stop supporting Itanium. Oracle meets the suit by saying it is nothing but a PR stunt to blame Oracle for the disruption in HP’s Itanium-based server operation. It calls it a misuse of the law.
Oracle revealed in March that it has stopped developing for Itanium/IA64 and will stop supporting Itanium since it doesn’t have long to go now. HP met the accusations through denial and claiming there are roadmaps for at least 10 years. Unofficial sources confirms what Oracle says and that Intel is moving engineers from Itanium to Xeon project is further proof of this.
“Intel has wanted to discontinue Itanium production for years, and HP knows it. The performance advantage over Intel’s x86-based microprocessors that once justified Itanium is today effectively gone. But the end of Itanium is a business disaster for HP, which generates a large percentage of its overall profit from Itanium support agreements.”, says Oracle.
Oracle simply says that HP is lying to its customers to continue make money on support contracts for Itanium, which are very serious accusations. It says that instead of telling the truth about Intel’s plans to phase out Itanium and help them migrate to Intel Xeon or other options, it wants to keep the myth about Itanium having a roadmap up to 10 years into the future alive.
Source: Oracle
