Even though Intel's new Itanium chip arrived years late, some of its performance numbers have drawn qualified praise from industry analysts. Sun is Intel's chief competitor when it comes to trying to win a place for Itanium, a chip Intel announced Tuesday. Two key chip measurements from testing company Standard Performance Evaluation show that Intel's new 800MHz Itanium server chip is neck and neck with Sun's newest UltraSparc III chip and, in some cases, Itanium is soundly beating it. Measures relative speed in computing processes such as compressing a file, word processing or compiling software.
Higher numbers mean greater performance.
Measures mathematical processes such as drawing 3D images or simulating nuclear physics. Piper Jaffray analyst Ashok Kumar believes Intel ultimately will succeed. But it is best viewed as the first step in a long line of processors that will eventually dominate the high end of computing, pushing aside current competitors such as IBM's Power family and Sun's Sparc processors. Itanium beats even Compaq's lauded Alpha chip, Terry Shannon, author of the Shannon Knows Compaq newsletter, said in a note Tuesday. Krewell predicted IBM's coming Power4 chip, due to arrive in servers this fall, also will keep the pressure on Itanium.