InformationWeek

The demonstration, conducted at Intel's Itanium Plugfest in Portland, Ore., is significant because it ensures that the chip will have robust Linux support when it ships later this year. The TurboLinux operating system ran successfully on an early version of the chip inside test servers provided by major PC server makers, including Compaq, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard.

Intel is counting on the combination of Linux and Itanium to give PC servers a larger presence among companies that have traditionally turned to big system vendors such as IBM and Sun Microsystems for back-end servers.

Linux vendors, in turn, are hopeful that Itanium, with its enhanced parallel processing capabilities, will help make the open-source operating system a more viable option for key applications. "IA-64 is going to be a very important platform for us," says Carnet Williams, strategic alliances manager at TurboLinux. "A lot of the Itanium architecture is geared towards running database and transaction software, and Linux works very well for these types of applications because of its low overhead and stability."

Several major enterprise application developers, including Oracle and SAP, also say they'll have Itanium-ready products available when the chip ships.

Analysts say a Linux-Itanium combination could make Intel more competitive in the market for chips that power enterprise-class servers, while at the same time posing a threat to Microsoft's dominance of the Intel-compatible operating-system market. "Intel is going beyond agnosticism in terms of which operating systems they are pushing for servers," says Terry Ragsdale, who follows the microprocessor industry for J.P. Morgan Securities. "They want to provide very clear support for Unix, and thereby Linux, because it has the scalability and reliability that Windows doesn't."