Oracle chose not to mince words when responding to Hewlett Packard's lawsuit over the company's decision to stop developing software for Intel's Itanium platform. As far as Oracle is concerned, HP's suit is nothing more than a "publicity stunt" and is part of a "broader campaign to lay the blame on Oracle for the disruption that will occur when HP's Itanium-based server business inevitably comes to an end," Oracle said in a court filing. Oh snap!

As far as Oracle sees it, Intel's Itanium architecture is yesterday's news. Such was the decision Oracle announced to discontinue all software development for Itanium processors, which Oracle says is in response to Intel's "clear strategic direction to focus on their x86 microprocessor." Oracle also pointed out that Itanium is nearling End-of-Life (EOL) anyway. But is it?

Following a series of delays, Intel has finally begun revenue shipments of its "Tukwila" processor, the codename for its newest Itanium chip.

According to Intel, Tukwila more than the doubles the performance of its predecessor, while also adding a "range of new scalability, reliability, and virtualization features," the chip maker stated in a blog post.

Tukwila's official launch will likely come on February 8, the same day Intel is scheduled to hold a press conference alongside representatives from Hewlett-Packard's business-critical servers unit in its software business. No other OEM implements more Itanium parts than HP, who uses them to power its Integrity systems and NonStop servers.

Intel says that Tukwila will be the first of several announcements slated for the first half of this year as the company looks to make a "major push" into the server processor arena.

HP didn't forget to celebrate the 35th anniversary of its high-end NonStop servers by announcing upgrades in capacity, performance, and enterprise integration. The company's NonStop servers are used in several sectors, including banking institutions, ER centers, hospitals, and mobile phone operators.

"Rabobank looks to HP NonStop technology to handle our mission-critical financial services applications and help mitigate risks associated with virtual banking," said Diederick de Buck, technical architect for NonStop systems at Rabobank, a full-range financial services provider based in the Netherlands. "The HP NonStop system has been an innovative force in mission-critical computing from the very beginning and has laid a solid foundation for Rabobank for many years to come."

HP said it upgraded the NonStop SQL 2.3 database, paving the way for increased service levels through simplified software programming, improved application capacity, and higher performance.

Other upgrades include the introduction of NonStop BladeCluster Express 1.2, which offers a performance boost in complete enterprise data center systems spanning a large geographic area, and the introduction of NonStop SOAP 4.0, which purportedly offers seamless integration with open-source software such as Spring, Apache Axis2, MyFaces, and Hibernate.