Oracle officials in a court filing have alleged that Hewlett-Packard was paying Intel to keep the Itanium processor alive so that HP could continue using the chip in its high-end servers and protect the money it makes from its HP-UX operating system.
The filing is part of a larger lawsuit filed by HP after Oracle in March announced it would stop developing software products for the Itanium platform. Oracle had alleged that Intel intended to kill off the processor in favor of its more popular Xeon chips.
On the other hand, HP officials claim that Oracle’s decision violates an agreement reached between the two that they would support products that are used by their 1,40,000 mutual customers. HP officials say by dropping Itanium support, Oracle is forcing their customers to choose between HP’s hardware or Oracle’s.
Saying Intel’s independent business judgment would have killed off Itanium years ago Oracle officials say in the court document, "But HP has secretly contracted with Intel to keep churning out Itaniums so that HP can maintain the appearance that a dead microprocessor is still alive."
