HP will announce four Itanium 2-based server and workstation systems on Monday as part of the Itanium 2 launch, using its previously disclosed zx1 chip set that supports one to four processors. The company is now working on a chip set code-named Pinnacles that will support servers with eight to 32 processors.

The Pinnacles chip set will come to market in the middle of 2003 in an upgraded version of HP's high-end Superdome server running the next-generation Itanium processor, called Madison, which will sport 6 Mbytes of on-die Level 3 cache. Pinnacles will also include some clustering technology from Compaq Computer's Massachusetts lab, leveraged following the recent merger of HP and Compaq and their respective server chip set teams.

HP believes unit sales of Itanium-based systems will outpace unit sales of its PA-RISC computers by the middle of 2003, said Barry Crume, a senior product marketing manager for HP's technical computers. HP and Intel Corp. agreed to co-design the Itanium line at a meeting nine years ago in Lake Tahoe, Nev. Since then, HP has planned to transition from the PA-RISC to Itanium.

HP will deliver a dual-core PA 8800 chip that uses the Itanium 2 processor bus and runs at 1 GHz or faster next year, to be followed by the 8900, an updated version of that chip, in 2004. The PA 8900 "looks like the processor to retire the line on, so it has to last for a long time," said Crume.

Cluster deals

Crume would not give sales projections for HP's Itanium 2 systems. However, he did say HP has won a multiyear deal valued at nearly $25 million to deliver an Itanium 2 cluster with 1,400 CPUs to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Richland, Wash.). That system will use a mix of the current McKinley and next-generation Madison processors. IBM Corp. is believed to have won an even larger deal to supply the U.S. Department of Energy with a 4,000-CPU Itanium 2 cluster serving four sites including Cal Tech and Argonne National Labs.

Both deals are based on clusters running Linux. "Linux is going to take off in a big way in the scientific community," Crume said.

HP also has had significant interest in its uniprocessor Itanium 2 workstation, geared for software developers. Some of that interest comes from other OEMs who will resell those workstations under their own brand. However, HP is not currently planning to sell on the merchant market the zx1 chip set on which those systems are based.

The zx1 is geared to work with three generations of Itanium processors — McKinley, Madison and the Montecito, which is expected in 2004. Intel has said all of these processors will use the same processor bus. However, a lag in availability of some systems and applications software for Itanium 2 will mean that "a general purpose workstation that you can order sight unseen will probably take until mid-2003," said Crume.

Nevertheless, HP decided to aim at the 1-to-4-processor server and workstation space for its initial Itanium 2 systems, holding off on higher-end multiprocessing systems until 2003. "This is where the volume is in the next year," Crume said.

Specifically, HP will sell a 900-MHz Itanium 2 uniprocessor workstation for about $4,500, a dual-processor workstation and rack-mounted server starting at about $7,000 and a four-way rack mounted server starting at about $30,000.

The 64-bit Itanium family has been criticized for its poor performance on native 32-bit X86 code. But by using HP's compilers, Crume said that 32-bit code on HP-UX should deliver full processor performance. However, running 32-bit apps on X86 compatible hardware on the Itanium 2 would degrade performance to just 20 to 50 percent of the native processor's performance capabilities.

Microsoft Corp. has come up with its own workaround for that 32-bit performance issue. Windows on Windows (WoW) is a software capability that encapsulates 32-bit Windows code to run on the 64-bit Itanium and offers about 70 percent of the processor's native performance, Crume said.

One surprise in the Itanium 2 launch is that Dell Computer Corp. has decided not to offer systems using the new processor at this stage. The company is "taking a wait-and-see" approach to Itanium 2 according to a spokesman.

"At this point we would have been more surprised if Dell was building an Itanium 2 system. When there is a volume market that the rest of us have built there will still be plenty of time for Dell to come in," said Crume.