Technology Shifts and the Need For Itanium Processor Power
From a hardware point of view, the “high growth” market for Intel architecture machines has shifted from personal computers to network servers. This can be accomplished, if not in the most efficient manner, by having the machine “tricked out” with extra memory and a load of extra disk drives. However, the growth of the Internet has led to an exponential increase in the demands placed on these kinds of servers.
No matter how extensive the upgrades, the personal computing processors—top of the line Pentiums and their clone offshoots—are simply not enough. The microprocessor 'engines' that were originally designed to drive workstations remain too unscalable to effectively handle today's server demands. More recently, the prevailing shift has been towards machines specifically designed to handle the extra load.
The Rise of the Network Server
Today's corporate computing departments have effectively migrated from the “big iron” surrounded by PCs model to clients-connected to a peer-to-peer network of servers spanning multiple enterprises. Specifically, the move has been toward UNIX®[4]-based servers made by companies such as Sun Microsystems, IBM (yes, even the mainframe giant), and of course, Hewlett-Packard—especially the new HP which also now includes Compaq. This decision to place more computing power at network nodes is based on two main factors.
[4] UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group.
First, the 'heavy lifting' enterprise and scientific and engineering computing tasks are ones that need reliability and high availability as well as speed. The use of UNIX as the operating system of choice to run for example, sensitive financial, scientific, modeling, or data warehousing applications is directly related to how valuable the data involved has become. This market is important to the degree that each of the main vendors of Unix based systems have their own 'flavor' of the Unix operating system: Sun Microsystems runs Solaris, IBM uses AIX, and HP runs HP-UX.
Second, the companies and organizations that have the need for such heavy computing power have not extensively used PC-based servers for a very simple fact. Most PC-based chip families lack the reliability and basic horsepower needed to drive complex, compute resource-intensive applications. UNIX servers typically incorporate more powerful microprocessors to begin with, and this trend continues and is accelerated by the implementation of Itanium®-based servers.
Itanium-based Systems Ideal for the Network Server
The Intel Itanium processor family is well positioned to take advantage of these ongoing customer needs. For example, systems powered by Itanium processors can handle the large datasets and bandwidth-intensive applications that are utilized by major corporations. Also, Itanium based systems can easily integrate and manage large databases that are typical of applications built on software from Oracle®[5] and Microsoft®[6] as well as IBM (Informix and DB2).
[5] Oracle is a registered U.S. trademark of Oracle Corporation, Redwood City, California.
[6] Microsoft is a U.S. registered trademark of Microsoft Corp.
Companies that need a large amount of fast, powerful computing power also stand to benefit from the Itanium architecture's rollout. If a major capital investment has been made in earlier versions of either Microsoft, Linux,®[7] or HP-UX software, complete backward compatibility is successfully retained. In addition, needs such as complex modeling and design, or projects that require maximum scalability, headroom for the future, and investment protection will realize major benefits from the Itanium architecture. Because it is based on an industry standard architecture backed by volume manufacturing, Itanium-based systems can decisively claim the ability to run a computing environment at a significantly lower cost than a comparable RISC-based system.
[7] Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.