Proving what a big Itanium backer it is, IBM released a new benchmark for its highest-end Power4+ server on the same day that Intel kicked off its developer conference.

IBM now has a 32 processor p690 box churning out 1,025,486 transactions per minute - the highest mark for any single system. The score beats out the 1,008,144 tpm set earlier by HP with a 64 processor Itanium-based Superdome server. The IBM kit ran DB2, while HP ran Oracle.

It's easy to forget that IBM sells Itanium-based servers. The company has called Intel's chip a science project and tends to hide Itanic gear on its Web site. (Funny thing is that Intel has started hiding the Itanic too.)

When IBM talks about high performance computing, it likes customers to fixate on the homegrown Power chip instead of Intel's beast. In particular, IBM enjoys taking shots at rival HP, which has bet on Itanium big time and then some.

And so it should not come as a surprise to see IBM beating on an HP Itanium server at the start of IDF. The message is pretty clear.

The new benchmark score can be found here.
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