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IBM is planning to announce its first Itanium 2 server this week, ending speculation about the strength of the company's commitment to Intel's processor, according to sources familiar with IBM's plan.

Separately, Hewlett-Packard said it will ship two Itanium 2-based workstations for the high-performance computing market that run Microsoft's new Windows XP 64-Bit Edition Version 2003 operating system. Microsoft supported Itanium early, releasing a 64-bit Windows for the chip when Itanium made its debut.

IBM: Slow Start

IBM's X450 server was shown last year at Linuxworld, but the company had not released any other details prior to this week. At last year's show, IBM said the server would feature between four and eight Itanium 2 processors.

An IBM spokesperson declined to comment on the unannounced products.

Since that preview, IBM has been quiet about its Itanium plans, raising speculation that the company was not in a hurry to support the new CPU.

IBM has its own chip for 64-bit servers, the Power4, which had led many observers to question IBM's desire to release a system based on a competing chip. The company did build a cluster of Itanium 2-based servers for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications last year, but had been otherwise quiet about its plans for the Itanium 2 processor.

HP's Entries

Hewlett-Packard's newly announced Itanium 2 workstations are the first HP products to make use of Microsoft's new operating system that is tailored for Itanium products.

Both are scheduled to become available on May 1, and are intended for technical and business applications such as computer-aided design and analysis, as well as for software development.

The Zx2000 will cost $3298, and the Zx6000 is priced at $4896.

The new version of Windows XP developed for Itanium provides the benefit of a single desktop that can run high-performing 32- and 64-bit applications. Windows XP 64-Bit Edition Version 2003 takes advantage of the larger memory and higher floating-point performance of the 64-bit Itanium architecture while providing a single source base for both 32- and 64-bit environments, according to HP.

Microsoft has also committed to developing a 64-bit version of Windows optimized for use with Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron processor. AMD began shipping the Opteron earlier this month.

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