In a strange twist of fate, the depreciated Itanium IA-64 architecture is getting a new lease on life, at least sort of.

Intel has quietly changed its roadmap for the next version of its Itanium processor, code named Kittson, throwing into doubt the future of Hewlett-Packard's Integrity and Superdome server lines.

Computing giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) has begun shipping the first fully supported version of the OpenVMS operating system for its Integrity range of servers, based on Intel's 64bit Itanium processor.

Oracle said it reached the decision to discontinue development on Itanium after “multiple conversations” with Intel senior management. "Intel management made it clear that their ...