In an odd development, Oracle has attempted to pre-announce the discontinuation of Intel's Itanium line. In a statement today, the database maker announced that, "it has decided to discontinue all software development on the Intel Itanium microprocessor in response to Intel's clear strategic direction to focus on their x86 microprocessor and with Itanium nearing the end of its life."

That Itanium is nearing the end of its life is a surprise, given that Intel just took the wraps off of its next major Itanium microarchitecture revision, codenamed Poulson, at this past ISSCC. And Intel itself has just released a statement denying that it has any plans to can Itanium.

As a result of recent announcements from Oracle, Intel is taking this opportunity to directly reiterate its plans for the Itanium processor. “Intel’s work on Intel Itanium processors and platforms continues unabated with multiple generations of chips currently in development and on schedule,” said Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel Corporation “We remain firmly committed to delivering a competitive, multi-generational roadmap for HP-UX and other operating system customers that run the Itanium architecture.” Poulson is Intel’s next generation 32nm 8 core based Itanium chip, and is on track to more than double the performance of the existing Tukwila architecture. Kittson is an officially committed roadmap product for Itanium beyond Poulson and is also in active development. Intel Itanium processor industry momentum will be highlighted in a keynote at the upcoming Beijing Intel Developer’s Forum.

I'm sure Oracle's insistence that Itanium is dead has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Oracle itself now has its very own, boutique, perennially close-to-cancellation processor family in SPARC. It makes little sense to support two doomed architectures, especially when you just purchased one of them along with Sun.

As for Itanium, it's hard to truly know what's going to happen with Intel's boutique processor line. Itanium, popularly referred to by some wags as "Itanic," has allegedly been on its deathbed since well before its years-delayed launch. The product family has been plagued by one massively missed launch date after another, and it does often look close to the chopping block, especially in light of the vigor with which Intel pushes x86 everywhere.

But as Itanium's many advocates constantly point out in forums and in long, vituperative e-mail messages whenever and wherever the topic of Itanium's alleged demise comes up, Itanium shipments continue to grow, albeit at a slowing pace. (If I'm wrong about this, just check the comments. Most Itanium defenders have a vi macro + Perl script combo that automatically fetches the latest Itanium sales figures and pastes them into whatever stinging rebuke they're composing, so they'll no doubt correct me shortly.)