Even though the Itanium processor was a no-show at the recent Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, Calif., the fledgling IA-64 chip was frequently seen at Intel's Exchange show, held 50 miles away on the same dates. Several server makers displayed Itanium systems, and there were even a few customers (such as Wells Fargo) on hand to endorse the 64-bit technology.

This commitment leaves little doubt that Itanium systems will be available next year from several vendors. But although support for Itanium is a mile wide, in many cases it is only an inch deep. A few vendors are building custom chip sets and motherboards for Itanium, but most are wrapping sheet metal and software around Intel's four-processor Itanium motherboard.

Thus, most Itanium systems will be two- to eight-CPU servers, the same segments that Xeon dominates today. The Pentium 4 Xeon, which will appear next year with performance equivalent to Itanium's, will continue to dominate these segments through 2001.

Itanium will still make a splash in the server market. But I expect most Itanium systems sold next year will be used for software development or in customer validation; volume deployment will occur only at a limited number of sites.

This slow ramp is due in part to the long buying cycles common in large servers. But dampening the excitement is that Itanium is simply not delivering the standout performance expected of the first fundamentally new instruction set in nearly 20 years.

Intel is still working to improve the IA-64 compilers and to boost Itanium's clock speed to its 800-MHz goal. But IA-64 is unlikely to significantly surpass RISC or even Xeon performance until the McKinley version appears. Itanium's successor is on track to tape out by the end of this year and to appear in systems about a year after Itanium.

Intel says McKinley will offer twice the performance of Itanium on most applications, but it requires different chip sets and motherboards. Many OEMs are applying more design effort to McKinley than to Itanium, and chip set maker ServerWorks is skipping the Itanium generation entirely. Even Intel is focusing on chip sets that support both Xeon and McKinley, leaving Itanium as an orphan platform.

McKinley, not Itanium, will determine the fate of IA-64. If McKinley meets its performance promises, IA-64 may yet dominate the server market. But if McKinley doesn't deliver, IA-64 isn't going to get a third chance.

Linley Gwennap, coauthor of "A Guide to Network Processors" (www.linleygroup.com/npu), is principal analyst of The Linley Group.