Itanium group courts Solaris developers

Aiming to port Sparc applications to Itanium.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance has unveiled a new Platform Expansion Programme which seeks to increase the number of applications available on the Intel 64-bit platform.

The program allows applications designed for Sparc servers running Solaris to run on Itanium 2 systems.

It uses the QuickTransit technology developed by Transitive Corporation to run the code without requiring any porting. Software vendors are required to purchase a licence from Transitive.

A lack of third-party applications is one of the major problems facing Itanium on its quest to reach mainstream adoption.

The Sparc/Solaris migration program aims to provide an instant boost to the number of applications available on the platform.

In an effort to further grow the number of available applications, the Itanium Solutions Alliance has also launched a US$50,000 programming contest.

Prizes will be awarded in three categories: humanitarian impact; increase in business effectiveness; and improvement of business operations for smaller businesses.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance is made up of Intel and vendors making Itanium systems such as HP, NEC, Fujitsu and SGI.

The group was created to drum up support for the platform after Itanium failed to meet early market expectations, and ensure interoperability of applications between different vendors' systems.