Dell to drop Itanium-based servers
{{date|September 16, 2005}}

An [[w:Intel|Intel]] spokesperson confirmed Thursday that [[w:Dell|Dell]] would no longer be offering servers with Intel [[w:Itanium|Itanium]] CPUs.  The spokesperson said "Losing Dell as an Itanium customer is unfortunate but frankly, we see their impact as negligible."  Servers with Itanium CPUs are no longer promoted on Dell's website, though a few can be found by searching.
 
Dell is the largest seller of computers with Intel processors. Dell currently sells 10.5 percent of all servers worldwide. The majority of Dell servers use an [[w:IA-32|IA-32]] (colloquially "x86") chip, but a growing number use the [[w:64-bit|64-bit]] [[w:Intel Xeon|Intel Xeon]]. Sales of Itanium servers have been very poor; last year Dell sold only 1,371 Itanium servers, up from 12 the previous year. In February, [[w:IBM|IBM]] also phased out Itanium-based servers, replacing them with IBM [[w:IBM POWER|Power]] CPUs. [[w:Fujitsu|Fujitsu]], [[w:HP|HP]], [[w:Hitachi, Ltd.|Hitachi]] [[w:NEC Corporation|NEC]], [[w:Silicon Graphics|SGI]] and [[w:Unisys|Unisys]] are the only major manufacturers to still offer Itanium-based servers.

The Intel Itanium was designed in the early 1990s. It was intended to be the processor of choice for 64-bit computers, but the processor suffered from several major flaws preventing widespread adoption. Unlike competing [[w:AMD64|AMD64]] chips, the Intel Itanium uses a different instruction set from IA-32 chips. An emulation feature allows them to run IA-32 code, but only very slowly; users were forced to choose between accepting greatly-reduced performance and expending time and programmers' salaries porting their software.  Even Intel has acquiesced to AMD's leadership in this field, designing chips with a compatible [[w:EM64T|EM64T]] technology.

== Sources ==
*{{source|url=http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsid=4415&inkc=0
|title=Dell ditches Itanium
|author=Tom Krazit
|pub=Techworld
|date=September 16, 2005}}
*{{source|url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/15/dell_abandons_itanic/
|title=Abandon ship! Dell jumps off Itanium
|author=Andrew Orlowski
|pub=The Register
|date=September 15, 2005}}
*{{source|url=http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050915-5316.html
|title=Dell dropping the Itanium
|author=Eric Bangeman
|pub=arstechnica
|date=September 15, 2005}}
*{{source|url=http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2141587/server-sales-stay-course
|title=Server sales stay the course
|author=Tom Sanders
|pub=vnunet.com
|date=August 29, 2005}}

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[[Category:Computing]]
[[Category:Economy and business]]
[[Category:Dell]]
[[Category:Hewlett-Packard]]
An Intel spokesperson confirmed Thursday that Dell would no longer be offering servers with Intel Itanium CPUs.  The spokesperson said "Losing Dell as an Itanium customer is unfortunate but frankly, we see their impact as negligible."  Servers with Itanium CPUs are no longer promoted on Dell's website, though a few can be found by searching.
 
Dell is the largest seller of computers with Intel processors. Dell currently sells 10.5 percent of all servers worldwide. The majority of Dell servers use an IA-32 (colloquially "x86") chip, but a growing number use the 64-bit Intel Xeon. Sales of Itanium servers have been very poor; last year Dell sold only 1,371 Itanium servers, up from 12 the previous year. In February, IBM also phased out Itanium-based servers, replacing them with IBM Power CPUs. Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi NEC, SGI and Unisys are the only major manufacturers to still offer Itanium-based servers.

The Intel Itanium was designed in the early 1990s. It was intended to be the processor of choice for 64-bit computers, but the processor suffered from several major flaws preventing widespread adoption. Unlike competing AMD64 chips, the Intel Itanium uses a different instruction set from IA-32 chips. An emulation feature allows them to run IA-32 code, but only very slowly; users were forced to choose between accepting greatly-reduced performance and expending time and programmers' salaries porting their software.  Even Intel has acquiesced to AMD's leadership in this field, designing chips with a compatible EM64T technology.
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