Dell, a large maker of servers, earlier this week reportedly notified its customers about plans to discontinue its machines running Intel Itanium 2 processors. While Dell has never been a significant Intel Itanium seller, the move may prove the Itanium 2 processors are not gaining market acceptance which would satisfy Dell.

Dell reportedly plans to scrap two-way PowerEdge 3250 and four-way PowerEdge 7250 servers based on the Itanium 2 processors. Instead of those machines running the IA64 chips, the computer manufacturer advices its customers to acquire servers based on Intel Xeon processors with 64-bit capability. At press-time Dell sold its PowerEdge 3250 machines at a discount price, which may be an indicator of the company’s intention to get rid of the remaining machines as quickly as possible.

The move by the Round Rock, Texas, computer maker comes at a time when Intel and other vendors are preparing to launch later this month an alliance to expand the reach of the Itanium platform, notes an article at eWeek web-site.

“We’re aware of the decision, and that, based on their business model – they go after the volume [server] business, this does make a lot of sense for them,” Erica Fields, a spokeswoman for Intel is reported to have said. Still she added that Dell’s “impact on [Itanium 2] sales has always been negligible”.

HP is remaining the main adopter and the largest maker of Intel Itanium 2-based machines.