Intel President Paul Otellini squashed any thoughts of the Itanium platform moving to desktops in the near term, telling Intel solution provider partners that the market isn't yet fully primed for the architecture on the PC.
Speaking in a closed-door session Monday at the Intel Solutions Summit in San Diego, Otellini did provide some optimism, telling the conference he thinks the recession is now over and the market is primed to grow, solution providers said.
"He said although '01 was a recession year, '02 was an upswing," said Gene Kim, vice president of sales and marketing at RackSaver, a San Diego-based Intel partner.
And while Xeon processors for servers and workstations continue to be a focal point for much of Intel's business through the channel, Otellini alluded that Intel's 64-bit platform would ramp slowly on the desktop.
Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices, Sunnyvale, Calif., recently postponed shipment of its 64-bit desktop processor, the Athlon 64, from the early part of the year until September. AMD is still slated to ship its 64-bit chip for servers, Opteron, beginning April 22.
Otellini told partners that the 64-bit market is not really ready for PCs, especially with applications and application support, and addressable memory costs for the platform are still too high and impractical, according to Kim.
Kim described interest among his own clients for Itanium server system as limited.
"Interest for evaluation models - yes," Kim said. "In terms of purchasing a system and making a commitment - we're not there yet."
Ted Roller, president of Oxford Systems Integration, said Otellini's message was consistent. Roller added that he agreed with Otellini's assessment of 64-bit computing on desktops.
Jeff Berner, COO of Infinity Computer, an Intel Premier Provider, also agreed with Otellini's remarks. Berner said that while "the world is expecting" adoption of 64-bit computing, the market isn't mature enough.
In addition to 64-bit computing, Otellini repeated remarks of other Intel executives that there continues to be a brisk market for the Xeon processor for servers and workstations, although the company is working to improve Xeon supplies to the channel. Intel executives said Xeon shipments to the company's North American channels increased by 800 percent last year, and are on track to double in 2003.
"The price went from US$2,000 per chip to US$300," Berner said, adding that the price cuts alone would be cause to expect a jump in volume.
Copyright © 2002 CMP Media