All HPQ paths lead to Itanic

CUSTOMERS OF HP AND the old Compaq are now being showed HPQ roadmaps which show that all chip roads converge to the Intel Itanium - but it will be 2005 before PA-RISC, Alpha and MIPS swerve into Intel's 64-bit lane.

That has emerged from slides seen by the INQUIRER over the weekend, and which appear to demonstrate the path ahead.

Here's a quick shot of one slide which appears to underline HP's new vision for the Itanic.

But it is the next slide in the series that is of great interest. According to this, a "Madison" module built in early 2004 will then be displayed by Montecito later that year, and followed by a Montecito "module" in early 2005. This slide appears to be related to performance, with the Madison "module" excelling PA-RISC, Montecito equalling IBM Power chips in performance, and a Montecito "module" excelling anything IBM can throw at HPQ.

There's an HP NonStop (Tandem) server roadmap in the same series, which shows the S88000 and the S78000 getting MIPS "speed ups" in 2003, while next year in the first quarter there will be a G06.20 NonStop kernel which will be Itanium ready.

In 2004, HP NonStop has Yosemite and Itanium Madison on the map, with a 64-bit NSK schedyled for 2005.

This slide shows how HP hopes to push in box upgrades and binary compatibility PA-RISC products and AlphaServer products into what HP considers its mainstream - Itanium servers: