NewsForge has a short piece on the launch of the Itanium 2 platform. “Hewlett-Packard and Intel will announce with great fanfare the pending release of the Itanium 2 platform today, and you'll probably be able to read several stories with the two companies saying their new 64-bit architecture is going to breath new life into the Itanium line and kick the competition's butt. HP is also touting the Itanium 2 as a perfect match for Linux.”
Mike Balma, Linux business strategist for HP, notes that the company partnered with Red Hat in mid-June to speed the port of Red Hat's Advanced Server Linux product to Itanium 2. HP plans to preload Red Hat on machines it sells as early as this fall, Balma says. HP is also working with MSC.Linux — that's what will be running on a a U.S. Department of Energy supercomputer announced in April — and Debian, which will be available for Itanium 2 when the product starts shipping in August. SuSE (and by extension UnitedLinux) is supposed to be available for Itanium 2 later in the fall. HP is also talking with other distributions.