IBM abandons Intel's Itanic

BIG BLUE has discontinued efforts to adapt Linux for the Itanium, according to IDG. IBM spokesman Ron Faveli said "IBM doesn't have anyone dedicated to working with Linux on Itanium." Favali proceeded to explain, "Our view right now is that Itanium is like a science project. There's not a market for it."

Of course Intel and HP don't agree. Intel claims that Itanium demand has "exceeded its expectations in some vertical markets," wrote IDG. But no sales figures are offered, so one can imagine they might say this with a straight face if they'd sold three chips instead of just two.

Intel/HP also point to the "massive resources" they devote to polishing operating systems and software for their joint bet-the-companies efforts with Itanium. In the case of Linux, surely IBM is glad to see them doing it, because that means IBM can spend its time elsewhere, like Power4.

After all, since Linux is Open Source, IBM will benefit from everyone's Itanium tuning in Linux anyway. It's not like Intel/HP have a choice.

Someone high up at IBM must have asked the question, "Why should we work to compete with HP and Dell on low-margin assembly of Intel systems?"

Especially when IBM has its own 64-bit processors in the Power family -- soon to be upgraded into performance levels competitive with Itanium.

And that's exactly what IBM is doing. Their Linux development teams that had been working with Itanium have be reassigned to tune Linux for IBM's own Power chips. Since no else will do this for them, it makes sense.

This development illustrates one of the strengths of Open Source: vendor self-interest leads them to tune the Linux OS for their own hardware.

Linux gains contributions from all vendors, the operating system playing field stays level, and vendors compete on their real value-added merits, such as reliability, scalability, clustering, manageability, support and not least, price and terms. As a result, all customers are empowered.

IDG attempts to spin this development into a budding feud between IBM and Intel/HP. But we think it's just IBM playing its cards well.

PC World has this story here. µ