Although HP's project Odyssey will let end users to install x86-based servers into HP Superdome systems, this will not reduce demand towards Itanium processors or HP's Integrity mission-critical servers, according to Intel Corp. As a result, Intel will continue to develop Itanium processor, whereas HP will continue to make HP-UX and other software aimed specifically at fault-tolerant computing.

"We remain to be equally committed to the Itanium and Xeon platforms, both of which represent our portfolio approach to bring open, standards-based computing to the mission critical computing market segment," said Radoslaw Walczyk, a spokesman for Intel.

HP on Wednesday announced “Odyssey”, a project to redefine the future of mission-critical computing with a development roadmap that will unify Unix and x86 server architectures to bring industry-leading availability, increased performance and uncompromising client choice to a single platform. Plans for project Odyssey include enhancing the HP-UX operating environment on HP Integrity servers and delivering blades with Intel Xeon processors for HP Superdome 2 enclosure (code named "DragonHawk") and the scalable c-Class blade enclosures (code named "HydraLynx"), while fortifying Windows and Linux environments with innovations from HP-UX within the next two years. Once “DragonHawk” is available, clients will be able to run mission-critical workloads on HP-UX on Intel Itanium-based blades while simultaneously running workloads on Microsoft Windows or Red Hat Linux on Intel Xeon-based blades in the same Superdome 2 enclosure.

HP began cascading mission-critical attributes to x86 with the launch of the HP ProLiant DL980. For example, the PREMA architecture in the DL980 takes advantage of some of the scalability and reliability capabilities offered on Integrity servers. HP will continue to cascade its mission-critical IP over time across hardware, software and services to deliver the full mission critical experience on x86. Ongoing innovations to Integrity systems and HP-UX are and will continue to be a source of innovation for x86 environments, which is a clear indicator that Itanium/HP-UX will remain on top of the server offerings.

"Customers buy Itanium-based systems for its support of resilient Unix operating systems, along with the combination of scalable enterprise performance and exceptional system reliability that is important to their mission critical needs. To date, Itanium platforms from our partners like HP have truly delivered the mission critical uptime, resiliency, scalability and overall capabilities that customers require – from the Superdome 2 platform architecture, to the HP-UX operating environment and the breadth of HP-UX based applications for the most demanding environments. We are very happy with HP announcement as it will provide more flexibility and choice for our customers," said Mr. Walczyk.

Tags: HP, Odyssey, Itanium, IA64, HP-UX, Linux, Red Hat, Windows, Hewlett-Packard, Intel