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Joe St Sauver, Ph.D.
Director, User Services and Network Applications
joe@oregon.uoregon.edu
We're beginning to see mainstream vendors such as Hewlett Packard offer workstations
and servers based on Intel's new Itanium/IA-64 processor. If you haven't been
following this processor, see Intel's extensive documentation at http://www.intel.com/itanium/index.htm,
including impressive benchmark results at
http://www.intel.com/eBusiness/products/ia64/overview/bm012101.htm
Before you rush off to buy one, however, you should note that the pricing for
these early IA-64 products is aligned with traditional Unix workstation pricing,
not with that of today's extremely cost-competitive commodity PC market.
For example, HP's new i2000 workstation with a 64 bit Itanium running at 733MHz,
and with an 18GB HDD, 1GB of SDRAM, and both Windows XP and HP-UX Unix is being
quoted at just under $8,000 at HP's online store (see http://www.hp.com/workstations/products/itanium/i2000/summary.html)
If you want a dual processor i2000, the tab rises to just under $15,000.
Given that pricing, the current performance available from Pentium 4 based systems, and marketplace knowledge that the McKinley processor family (aka Itanium II) is in testing, many customers who might otherwise be expected to immediately jump on new Itanium based systems may end up waiting. On the other hand, if you're a developer, it's clear you'll want to begin porting or tuning your products for that processor family.