Intel Surges Ahead In 64-Bit MarketIntel Surges Ahead In 64-Bit Market

Intel appears to have taken a big leap ahead of rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in the 64-bit chip market. The chipmaker reported performance breakthroughs for its Itanium 2 line last week, while AMD said it will delay the launch of its first 64-bit chip by several months.

Trials conducted at Intel's Developer Forum in San Jose, Calif., also indicate that Microsoft's Windows .Net Server 2003, set for release early next year, is significantly more scalable than its predecessor. Intel disclosed benchmarks for Itanium 2 systems from NEC Corp. and Unisys Corp. A 32-processor Itanium 2-based NEC TXZ 7 Server achieved a world-record TPC-C benchmark on a nonclustered system using a Windows operating system, according to the companies and the Transaction Performance Council, which creates and tracks the industry-standard benchmarks. The system topped 300,000 transactions per minute run-ning a beta version of Microsoft's forthcoming Windows .Net Server 2003 Datacenter Edition.

Intel and Unisys also demonstrated Unisys' 12-way ES7000 Orion server, which incorporates the Itanium 2 and is expected to ship later this year. The system used Windows .Net Server 2003 Datacenter Edition in conjunction with the 12-chip configuration.

Analysts say Intel's partnering with vendors that know the high-end symmetric multiprocessing market, along with the demonstrated scalability of Windows .Net Server 2003, could help it and Microsoft gain a long-sought-after entrée into the big data-center market.

AMD's ClawHammer, the desktop version of a line of processors that will compete with the 64-bit Itanium, was slated to debut late this year, but AMD says it won't ship until the first quarter of next year. It's still on track to launch Opteron, its 64-bit server version of the chip, in the first half of next year.