Intel will announce the release the long-awaited--and oft-delayed--Itanium processor in the US at the end of May, according to sources, and most computer companies plan unveil their products around the same time. IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and other large computer manufacturers will soon release details of 2, 4, and even 16-processor computers containing the 64-bit Itanium chip for the first time.

The chip and computers containing it, will compete against more expensive Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) servers and workstations from Sun Microsystems, IBM and HP. In addition to processors running at 800MHz and 733MHz, the Itanium boxes will tout such features as 32G of memory--enough to store entire Web sites--and fairly large hard drives.

While it's unclear how well these computers will perform in benchmark performance tests against the established RISC aristocracy, it appears that some Itanium computers could cost slightly less than earlier anticipated.

Last year, initial price lists indicated that the chip would range in cost from of US$4,227 for an 800MHz Itanium with 4M of performance-enhancing tertiary cache to over US$3,500 for a 733MHz Itanium with 2M of tertiary cache.

Prices for Itaniums running at 733MHz and containing 2M of cache are expected to be comparable to Intel's current Xeon range, selling for between US$1,000 and US$2,000. Judging by Intel's pricing history, the 800MHz Itanium with 2M caches is likely to have a similar price. As a result, workstations will cost more than traditional Intel boxes "but somewhat less than a comparable RISC workstation", said Rick Rudd, product line manager for the Intellistation workstation line for IBM's US division.

There won't be lot of Itanium computers to choose from. A series of glitches have pushed back the chip from mid-1999 until now, and that's on top of a fairly long development period. Consequently, most companies are now concentrating on building computers for McKinley, a second, more powerful version of Itanium, which will start appearing in pilot projects at the end of the year.

"Every vendors' plans have changed considerably. We had much more aggressive plans 18 months ago," said Jay Bretzmann, US product marketing manager for IBM's X series of servers. "It makes a lot more sense to shift development and focus to McKinley."

Product selection, therefore, will be limited. Compaq, for instance, will come out with Itanium servers this year, according to sources at that company, but hold off on workstations until 2002.

HP will come out with two servers, a 4-processor server developed in co-operation with Intel and is proceeding with a similar co-development project with NEC to build a 16-way box.

IBM is expected to offer a single 2-processor workstation and one 4-processor server. IBM's Itanium Intellistation will contain two 800MHz Itaniums with 2M of cache, up to 16G of memory and an 18.2G or 36.2G hard drive. IBM's Itanium server, by contrast, will contain 4 processors with and 32G of memory.

Interest in the new Itanium systems is likely to be limited during the early stages of its inception.

"Initially the systems will be brought by software developers who want to adapt applications for IA-64, or as a test platform for migrating to it" said David Booth, Australian national systems marketing manager for Hewlett-Packard.

"The 64-bit platform will really hit its stride next year," said Rudd.

Despite the relatively limited introduction, the Itanium presence will grow as the year goes on. At the end of 2002, HP will start putting Itanium into "Superdome," its 32-processor RISC machine. Superdome pricing starts at a lofty US$1 million.

Eventually, Hewlett-Packard's Intel-based server line and the server line containing its PA-RISC chip will merge. At that point, Hewlett-Packard will be primarily marketing one server family and the main decision for the customer will be which operating system to select.

The size of the memory banks and the huge performance boost they offer remains one of the key features of Itanium systems. "You can load up all of the Web pages on a site and never go to disk," said Bretzmann.

Intel declined to comment on the specifics of the launch, but executives are clearly relieved the chip is finally coming out.

"This is the quarter many of us have waited five or six years for," said Paul Otellini, general manager of the Intel Architecture Group.

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