Just a couple of weeks ago, IBM suggested that Intel’s Itanium processor has about five years of useful life left in it before it departs this world for good. It is an interesting hypothesis, but one where the evidence is at least a bit arguable.  

For a start, one has to look seriously at IBM’s own, increasingly huge, vested interest. It is already pushing hard on promoting its own Power 6 family of RISC processors, and is also starting the process of winding up the market in readiness for the appearance of the next processor generation, Power 7. In addition, figures from market researchers, Gartner, suggest it is not only growing high-end Unix server sales around 6% but is also taking customers away from both HP and Sun. HP, of course, owns the world’s largest commitment to Itanium and is now - according to researchers, IDC – the largest server vendor of all.  

IBM is also pushing Power 6 into low-end Unix boxes, offering the chance for greater server continuity across the infrastructure, which some users will certainly welcome. In addition some new mainframe systems to replace the z9 family are due to appear from IBM at the end of February. These are expected to use the new z6 processor, which is a 4-core, 4 GHz mainframe first cousin of the Unix-running Power 6 processor. As often happens at such times, current mainframe sales have fallen – by nearly a third according to some claims - as users opt to await the new machines.  

The basis of IBM’s case against Itanium in any of the server market sectors, according to reported comments by company Vice President, Scott Handy, is that the business case suggests there is not enough business to support the continued existence of Itanium. At the face value of the status quo this does look a reasonable supposition. The question is whether the status quo is the `face value’ the world can expect in five year’s time. 

To be sure, there is currently no role for Itanium at the low-end of the server market. This is all taken up systems based on x86 multicore processors. But as the number of processor cores per chip grows, the real issue then becomes whether the operating systems and applications can keep up so as to even partially exploit the performance potential. It is certainly not clear whether there will be an operating system that allows users to get some advantage by, say, running 16 different x86-based legacy applications on a near future, 16-core x86 processor.  

Without that there is no advantage in the processor, unless there is a radical change in operating systems and applications – which fundamentally means a move to parallel processing architectures and a significant re-think (and not just re-write) of all applications architectures. Once that happens – and all the signs point to it being inevitable, certainly before IBM’s five-year death-sentence for Itanium – then all current bets are off; `face value’ will mean nothing as the `face’ will have changed drastically. 

At the other end of the spectrum there is the mainframe. This was, of course, supposed to have died as a machine type about 15 years ago – and the main lesson to be learned from its continued existence could simply be that `legacy’ software not only means `something bequeathed by a predecessor’ but, like a listed ancestral castle, something that is also damned difficult to get rid of. It would be reasonable for IBM to therefore view the mainframe marketplace as one where existing users are stuck with their commitment to the machines, and new markets or users are a merely a fond illusion.  

But that is not necessarily the case – and Itanium can certainly play a role in changing things. Last October, for example, DataDirect launched the latest, Version 7, of its mainframe integration tool, Shadow. This can now exploit direct SQL integration so that mainframe DB2 database applications can be integrated with any other SQL-compatible database or application. It can also now run, and integrate with, Java-based Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) applications. So developers can build a BPEL application once and pitch it at low-end x86 servers, mid-range RISC servers and high-end mainframe systems. These are capabilities that give mainframes the potential of a central, controlling role in online, event-driven, web-based systems – not something it would have been thought possible to suggest even a year ago. 

In fact, there is more and more integration technology coming along that links mainframes to the standards which lie at the heart of web-based services. This is, for example, where the likes of Platform Solutions Inc (PSI) now plays by providing technology that can run mainframe operating systems and applications on an Itanium-based server. IBM has recently launched a legal suit against PSI that revolves around this capability. 

Why would anyone want to run mainframe applications in that way? Well, for a start the fact that many of those applications have capabilities ideally suited to handling the high-throughput transactions that are inevitable with the web. The high bandwidth I/O and transaction management capabilities have the potential to make the `mainframe’ a far better option for real online trading management services than anything available now: except, of course, that `mainframes’ are deeply specialised boxes costing an arm and a leg in capital and operational investment.  

But if, as the runes now seem to be suggesting, the time is drawing near for the mainframe to come full circle and become central to the efficient running of business activities then the potential for a lower-cost, more flexible environment on which to run the applications and services could make it very attractive. An Itanium-based platform, especially if it could then also run Unix, Linux and/or Windows applications at a similar performance level to the x86, could change the value of the `face’ dramatically – and that could happen faster than anyone, certainly at IBM it would appear, would consider possible.