Microsoft Nixes Intel's Itanium Chip

An upcoming Microsoft(MSFT Quote) software product for clustered servers won't run on Intel's(INTC Quote) high-end Itanium 2 chip, according to a report first published on News.com. Instead, it will be optimized for a more mainstream type of server chip from Intel and rival Advanced Micro Devices(AMD Quote).

Itanium, which debuted in 2001, has long been rapped for failing to gain a level of market acceptance proportional to its high design costs. The latest news signals that Itanium will at least initially be left out of a server market that has gained increasing sway in the computing world.

Clustered servers -- linked networks of servers, which each contain only two or four processors -- were first viewed as a low-cost alternative to bigger, more expensive hardware. But they have quickly scaled the ladder to become important in high-powered academic and industry settings as well. ...