Reports of Itanium’s life greatly exaggerated, states Oracle Corporation

November 2011

Oracle, who owns Sun Microsystems, filed court papers this week alleging that a “secret” deal between Itanium developers HP and Intel is the only reason for the continued existence of the long-troubled chip–for which the business-software giant is ending its support.

“HP has secretly contracted with Intel to keep churning out Itaniums so that HP can maintain the appearance that a dead microprocessor is still alive,” reads the filing, which All Things Digital’s Arik Hesseldahl describes as a routine affair about the discovery process and timing in HP’s lawsuit against Oracle for dropping the chip.

HP alleges that Oracle‘s motivation for ending Itanium support is the latter company’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems and its server business, which relies on Intel x86 chips. Oracle, HP claims, is simply trying to convince Itanium customers that the chip isn’t long for this world and to get them to switch to x86-based servers like Sun’s.