Itanium to Absorb Alpha/SuperMicro Sees Double

The continuing saga of the merging of Compaq's Alpha unit and Intel's Itanium 64-bit processor plans has so far sounded as if they didn't take the time to come up with a prenuptial agreement. Or at least that's how it seems to users and the press because actual black and white announcements of the two companies' plans have rarely hit the wires. All we know to date seems to have been whispered into the ears of crafty journalists in dark alleys and pubs. The nervy folks at The Inquirer brave those dastardly locations digging for dirt on a regular basis and yesterday they reported that the Itanium and Alpha platforms will merge somewhere around 2005, but that Alpha processors will be produced through 2007. The continued production of Alpha processors is just about the same story we got via a Compaq employee back in June but this is the first we've heard about the two platforms being grafted together. In other Inq stories, we learned that SuperMicro is getting set to release a Dual Athlon Motherboard , and about a legless Japanese receptionist robot .