With the mild to serious scandal revolving around Intel's Itanium server platform and oracle's stance on it, any information on the subject is scouted out, and this is precisely what a recent report deals with.
The past month has been filled with reports and official notifications on Oracle's HP's and Intel's part regarding the Itanium server processor platform.
Oracle gave up on the chips, while HP took offense to it, as did its customers, who demanded that Oracle rethink its decision.
Intel said it would keep supporting Itanium for years, but also created new Xeon chips that, all in all, are better in almost, if not every, aspect.
Some questions arose as to why Intel is so determined to keep up with both server solutions, as the Xeon's existence and performance was seen as a reason for the phasing out of Itanium (which, again, is not happening).
Now, the folks over at X-bit Labs say that Intel has actually been making changes to its development teams for both processors.
More specifically, it has been reappointing engineers from the Itanium teams into those of Xeon development.
"Nearly all the Itanium engineers, save a small development team working on Poulson and then rotating over to Kittson, have been redeployed on Xeon-related projects," said person with knowledge of the situation, who wanted to remain anonymous.
"Intel does have few more tricks up their sleeve with respect to Itanium, but with Xeon getting stronger and more capable.”
Itanium chips have, as most pressing concern, per-core performance, since most UNIX applications ran by them were written back in 1970s – 1980s so they rely on high clocks.
The server technologies that the Santa Clara, California-based company is developing will work on both series of chips, but Xeon still has many advantages over the other, so one might say it does make sense for this employment shift.
