HP readies Itanium part two

This time its non-proprietary...

Hewlett-Packard is expected to reveal its second Itanium version of HP-UX operating system later this evening but won't start shipping until July.

The HP-UX 11i version 1.6 moves HP away from the proprietary PA-RISC processors for its servers and closer to Intel's Itanium 2, currently codenamed McKinley.

The McKinley Itanium processors are rumoured to launch in the first week of July with shipping following shortly afterwards. This would coincide with the shipping of the latest Itanium advances for HP-UX.

Ram Appalaraju, director of marketing for HP-UX, said the latest release brought the HP-UX and PA-RISC operating systems a lot closer to parity.