A REPORT ON news.com indicates that alll is still not well on the McKinley, "Itanium 2" front. The story said that IBM will introduce four way McKinley systems in an X440 form factor in the first quarter of 2003 – that"s a lengthy delay from Intel"s launch of the microprocessor back in the steamy days of July.
In fact, Intel"s own "Tyger" Itanium 2, which we saw at Computex in June, and aimed at system integrators who want to re-badge the server as its own, has still to ship in quantity. And buying an HP Itanium 2, rather than looking at the press release, seems not to be an easy adventure either.
IBM"s own server, like the HP machines, uses a proprietary chipset but the Intel Tyger machines use an Intel chipset. Sources at the recent Intel Developer Forum told us that some problems had been encountered making the original chipset work. The same sources suggested that Intel was reluctant to launch the McKinley when it did, but was under some pressure from its great friend Hewlett Packard to go with the launch. That"s a claim Intel denies.
Intel engineers did a thorough revision of the chipset, and a US representative of the firm told us at IDF that these machines were likely to be introduced in the fourth quarter of this year, without specifying a particular date