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HP is set to heat the server market with its new HP's Integrity rx3660 and the rx6600 server. HP's Integrity rx3660 server goes for US$10,531, and the rx6600 starts at US$14,771. Let's hope this time luck is with them since sales of the older Itanium servers were not encouraging. According to research firm Gartner, servers based on the processor accounted for less than one percent of the market nad that's pretty pathetic.

Nonetheless, according to HP marketing manager Don Jenkins, the market should be picking up since application support is not an issue anymore. There was only about 100 in 2003 while there are 9,000 software Itanium-aware applications now.

According to arnnet :

The Integrity rx6600 running Montecito performs close to 350,000 transactions per minute (tmp) -- more than twice the 161,000 tmp of an Integrity running an older version of Itanium -- according to tests by the independent Transaction Processing Performance Council. Montecito is also more cost-efficient, operating at US$2.24 per transaction minute, versus US$3.94 on a previous Itanium chip. The fastest processor tested by TPC is an IBM Power 5, which topped four million transactions per minute with a cost per minute of $2.97, noted Clabby. HP's Jenkins downplayed the significance of IBM's performance numbers, noting that most enterprises only need servers that can perform 150,000 to 300,000 transactions per minute.