By all early account , especially Intel ’s , the twofold - nub Itanium 2 Saratoga chip for high - end host that Intel unveiled last hebdomad looks to be an excellent performer with an striking workplace - to - W ratio .
Just do n’t reckon for it in Apple ’s Xserve when that server product line pass water the substitution from the PowerPC to Intel - supply processors .
That information does n’t come from Apple , which is tight - lipped as ever about future product developments . Nor is it a reflection on the Itanium 2 line — codification - named “ Montecito”—which commence with the $ 749 1.4GHz 9015 featuring 12 MB of L3 tertiary stash and top out with the $ 3,692 1.6GHz 9050 and its 24 MB of tertiary cache . Fabbed using a 90 - nm process , Intel ’s dual - core server chip rated at 104 watts , or 52 watts per core , down quite a piece from the 75 watts the stay single - Congress of Racial Equality Itanium 2 draws .
Alas , Apple has a lot more to believe than carrying out numbers . The IT departments and chief info military officer that decide which servers to buy in no way of life resemble the worldwide public — plug means nothing weighed against the opening of former nights and colossal support headaches implementing the latest , greatest , or just something different . Not that Itanium waiter are problematic , but the inertial don’t - localization - it - if - it ain’t- broke IT view works against latecomer .
denote in 1994 by Intel and HP , Itanium did n’t make it to market until 2001 . In the mean sentence , IT was settling on other answer and the Itanium platform has just never pull ahead a whole lot of traction . IBM ’s host featuring the Power5 chip , a relative of the PowerPC G5 in Apple ’s Xserve G5 boxes , have systematically outsold Itanium - based severs by a broad margin . For that matter , Sun ’s UltraSparc - based servers and even Itanium co - pardner HP ’s PA - RISC have outsell it . And by far the good selling sever CPU in the world is Intel ’s own Xeon . AMD ’s Opterons correspond yet more competition .
Estimated Worldwide Server Shipment Shares
Source : Gartner Dataquest Research
Also working against the Itanium is that its RISC ( Reduced Instruction Set Computer ) computer architecture is not X86 - compatible like the Xeon or Opteron ’s . This means Apple would take to port , recompile , and assert OS X Server for yet another processor family . Of course , the troupe could dump the PowerPC all in all and devote those resources to the Itanium , but then it could just as easily solidify completely on the x86 political platform to reduce maintenance toll .
“ At first glance , it would appear that [ Intel ’s ] Xeon has more applicability than Itanium to the workload where Apple has been selling its server . , ” said Jeffrey J. Hewitt , inquiry conductor for server markets at Gartner Dataquest Research . “ I do not expect to see Itanium - based Apple server until and unless Apple tests them with its code and sees public presentation advantages over Xeon in environments that it take to target . ”
A possible issue would be that if Apple wants to say bye-bye to the Power5 central processor in the short streak ( which is not at all a necessary move ) , it will be in favor of the Xeon which declare oneself Power5 - alike performance without the maintenance of another reading of the operating organisation . That said , Apple ’s petite footprint in the waiter industry and Steve Job ’s temperament might just warrant a bold stroke .
[ Jon L. Jacobi is a widely published freelance computer journalist who lives and works the Bay Area . ]
EDITOR ’S preeminence : deepen character reference to the Power5 chip to elucidate its relationship to the PowerPC G5 in Apple ’s Xserve .
