There are four reasons why the 64bit Itanium 2 processor will make a significant impact in the high-end server market, according to Jamel Tayeb, European head of software enabling at Intel: "Customers enjoy lower prices thanks to our economies of large-scale production, and they enjoy better performance and greater scalability and reliability." But Intel's two main processor rivals in the high-end server market - Sun with its UltraSparc processors, and IBM with its Power chips - have challenged these arguments.

Matthew Keep, Sun's server product manager, said that Intel was exaggerating its economies of scale. "We use Texas Instruments factories to manufacture our UltraSparc processors, so do not have to get involved in spending the $2bn necessary to build a processor production line. That gives us the volume economics." He added that Intel may also fail to sell more 64bit processors than its rivals. Analyst firm IDC estimated that Sun sold 500,000 Sparc systems last year, while Intel sold just 2,114 Itanium systems.

Independent tests also show that Itanium 2 may provide little performance advantage compared with other 64bit chips, and some current 32bit systems, in certain circumstances. Joel Tendler, programme director of technology assessment at IBM's Server Group, said. "Right now, the levels of performance of Itanium 2 are lower than those of Power 4 chips under some benchmarks."

Intel has said that an Itanium 2 server is cheaper and offers 50 percent higher transaction processing capabilities than a Sun server. This claim seems to be based on recent benchmark figures published by HP for an Itanium 2-based server running Transaction Processing Council (TPC) benchmarks. However, Sun's Keep argued that such claims are of little value because the hardware configurations would not be used in practice, and the prices are unrealistically low. "HP is using unpublished, discounted system prices in calculating the price per TPC-C figures," he said. "TPC-C is an inaccurate benchmark. It is not aimed at real-world applications, unlike the Oracle benchmarks where Sun outperforms all the others."

It is well-known that Sun pays scant attention to TPC benchmarks, in contrast to IBM, HP and Dell. However, IBM's Tendler argued, "TPC-C is still meaningful to corporate customers."

IBM and Sun were also critical of Intel's scalability claims. Intel's new i8870 chipset will support up to four Itanium 2s in a symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) configuration. Two 8870 chipsets can be linked to allow a maximum of eight processors. For the foreseeable future, Intel will not be directly supporting any larger configurations, though other manufacturers may develop their own chipsets for this purpose.

Sun, on the other hand, can already scale up to 106 processors in a single cabinet. "We also have clustering technology coming later this year that will allow systems of between 512 and 1,024 processors," said Keep.

IBM's Tendler expressed doubts about the efficiency of large multiprocessor Itanium 2 systems, especially from current vendors of Intel-based servers. "Not many of them understand how to deliver at the high-end," he argued. "I can't imagine many of them coming up with a 32-way system, they couldn't test it and they couldn't provide the management tools." IBM recently introduced a new range of multiprocessor systems starting with its 32-way p690 system, followed by cheaper cut-down versions offering fewer processors. These are based on Power 4 chips.

Tendler and Keep added that firms moving to Itanium 2-based systems would face high costs for migration and training, and would have difficulty finding applications and compilers. "Enterprise server buyers are the most conservative people ever," said Keep. "They are not going to rush for a new [product] that has no operating system yet, is not proven and has no track record."

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