Companies pledge support for Itanium 2
C|Net | at | by Mike
Microsoft, Unisys, several Linux developers and a host of other high-tech companies pledged their allegiance to Intel's Itanium 2 processor this week but generally acknowledged that their products for the processor won't roll out overnight. Microsoft will start to come out with an Itanium 2 version of Windows Advanced Server next month but won't issue a version of Windows XP for workstations until the first quarter of 2003. Windows.Net enterprise and data-center servers for Itanium will ship to manufacturers this year but likely won't be in customers' hands until next year. Itanium 2, a chip for high-end servers and workstations that has been in development at Intel for years, will compete against chips such as IBM's Power 4 and Sun's UltraSparc line that go into servers that cost anywhere from $25,000 to well over $1 million.