Xeon E7 servers run with the big dogs  Gives chase to RISC and
Itanium foxes  Transforming your business with flash storage
Xeon E7 vs Itanium  So how do the Xeon E7s stack up to Itanium
chips and their predecessors at the high end of the Xeon line?
Answering the former is tough, but the latter is easy.  As far
as Intel is concerned, Itanium has to fend for itself – and so
does the Xeon architecture.  Kirk Skaugen, head of Intel Data
Center Group  Skaugen: Xeon no longer bottom  Kirk Skaugen,
general manager of Intel's Data Center Group, was blunt about it
talking to investors in May 2011.  "When I picked up the Data
Center Group, we made one strategic flaw and that was
artificially protecting Itanium and not making Xeon 64-bit," he
explained. "Going forward, if the Atom micro-architecture is the
right architecture, we'll go do that."  Later in the talk,
Skaugen said that the situation was "no longer Itanium at the
top and Xeon at the bottom" and that the chip giant was thrilled
to have 20 design wins alread