Intel delivers new Itanium processors five years after the previous generation

Intel has started deliveries of the Kittson-generation Itanium processors. It is the first new generation after Poulson from 2012. It is rumored to be the last generation of Itanium chips.

For the time being, these are test deliveries to some customers, with large-scale deliveries to follow later this year, an Intel spokesperson told Infoworld. Kittson has been on Intel’s roadmap since 2007 and the generation succeeds Poulson from 2012, but successors to Kittson are unknown.

This seems to be the last generation of high-end chips for servers, something that rumors have alluded to for some time. Itanium’s viability has been in question for years, especially since IBM, Dell, Oracle, Microsoft and Red Hat dropped out of support.

In fact, this leaves Hewlett Packard Enterprise as the driving force. HP co-developed Itanium with Intel and the platform had to compete with IBM’s Power and Suns Sparc architectures, but Intel is now fully focused on Xeons, which, unlike Itanium, are based on x86. Xeon now has a share of more than ninety percent in the market for server chips.