HP, Oracle in fresh sniping

A new round of sniping between Hewlett-Packard (HP) and rival Oracle broke out on Wednesday, this time over chip technology from Intel at the heart of HP's high-end computer system, reports, The Wall Street Journal.

On Tuesday Oracle said it would stop developing new versions of its software for servers powered by Itanium, a line of Intel chips that HP helped develop.

The software giant said Intel senior management in multiple conversations indicated "that Itanium was nearing the end of its life."

However, Intel has poured a considerable amount of resources into Itanium over the years in partnership with HP, and the chip company appeared to take issue with Oracle's proclamation, notes Market Watch.

“As a result of recent announcements from Oracle, Intel is taking this opportunity to directly reiterate its plans for the Itanium processor,” Intel said in a statement.

Intel said its “work on Intel Itanium processors and platforms continues unabated, with multiple generations of chips currently in development and on schedule.”

According to ZDNet, Itanium, which was unveiled in 2001 and intended to replace the x86 architecture in high-performance designs, has been continuously relegated to smaller and smaller niches.

Currently, Intel says the chip is aimed at the largest Unix and mainframe markets. A new Itanium chip, code-named Poulson, was previewed by Intel in February, but the company has itself dropped support for the architecture from its latest compilers.