HP attacks Big Blue Power 5 servers, Sun reliability

SOURCES SAID that HP is making a concerted attack against its competitors IBM and Sun in a bid to position Itanium as a big tin killer.

HP told its customers that Power 5 servers from IBM and set for release early next year were unlikely to quadruple the performance of the p690, and claimed that Big Blue is scared by HP systems running the Itanium.

The Power 5 technology is way down the line, uses unproven technology, and has no commercial performance figures yet available.

Further, HP claims that customers will have to physically swap out boxes when Power 5 is launched, and that migrating in a similar way from HP systems will be $1 million cheaper than the move from the p690 to the IBM Armada.

Plus HP is spreading rumours that IBM is far from committed to the AIX operating system.

HP's FUD engine is also attempting to roll off the firm it truly loves to hate, Sun Microsystems. It is telling its customers there's a design problem in the 900MHz UltraSparc III uniboards that can cause crashes when the level two cache is hit sometimes.

Gartner, HP's friends, apparently have more info about this and while Sun has a fix to the problems it will only act after it hears from Sun customers, the FUD machine rumbles.

You wouldn't know it from the outside, but HP, Sun, IBM and the rest all have big competitive teams whose function is to diss the opposition - but never publicly, naturally. µ