In its attempt to move into large corporate IT systems, the world's largest chipmaker, Intel, is all set to launch its latest and most powerful microprocessor. It believes that leading systems manufacturers will soon begin to announce their first products using this Itanium microprocessor.

The new microprocessor is the culmination of a seven-year development project and is significantly different from Intel's previous chips. Intel hopes that the Itanium family will become a standard component in large corporate computer systems thus enabling vendors to compete on price rather than on proprietary technologies.

Among the first companies that will announce their products using this new Itanium chip will be Dell Computer, IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

Industry sources, however, put the sales of the new chip at a very small number in the first year as there will be relatively very few applications available on this chip. Besides, the sources feel, it will take about a year for the chip to be tested as reliable for various critical corporate IT applications. Intel also plans to produce a more powerful version of this chip in the next year which will have twice the performance of the existing chip.

Industry experts believe it will only be in 2003-04 that significant numbers of systems using the Itanium will be sold. The new chip is not yet designed to be used in personal computers, although experts believe that the new chip will find PC applications in the years to come.

The Itanium is a 64-bit microprocessor, compared with 32 bits for its Xeon and Pentium microprocessors. The 64-bit design allows Itanium systems to process larger amounts of data - essential for IT applications.

Hewlett-Packard, which has been closely involved in the development of Itanium and has contributed important technology to the project, plans to eventually stop producing large IT systems based on its own PA-RISC microprocessors and adopt Itanium.