Chip maker extraordinaire Intel
For Intel, which has a hankering to get its chips into more than just personal computers, this is a nice step forward. It's also a solid vote of confidence for its 64-bit Itanium line of chips.
Fujitsu will use the ultra-fast Itanium chips for its high-end servers and Intel's Xeon chips for smaller systems. The huge Japanese computer and electronics company expects to have the smaller servers ready for market by the end of 2004, and the more sophisticated systems out in 2005.
No one wants to shut Microsoft
Fujitsu is the fifth-largest server manufacturer in the world, and has been producing servers using the Unix operating system and Sparc architecture from Sun Microsystems
The agreement between Fujitsu and Intel isn't exclusive, though. Fujitsu will continue to make its own servers, as well as the Unix/Sun ones. The company will just have another offering soon, broadening its product line and perhaps market share. That's an unquestionably good thing for Fujitsu, and certainly for Intel, too.
Disclosure: LouAnn Lofton owns shares of Microsoft.