HP has announced the availability of its Itanium 2-based workstations running with the new Microsoft Windows XP 64-bit Edition Version 2003. This is expected to lead to the development of a large number of 64-bit applications for areas such as 3D animation, CAD/CAM and imagery analysis.

Until recently, 64-bit systems had been limited chiefly to high-end applications such as server networks from Sun Microsystems. The availability of Itanium on HP running windows (as well as recent releases from AMD and Linux) is expected to quickly popularize the 64-bit architecture, with its much more powerful processors and larger memory capacity.

HP is the co-inventor of the Itanium; the processor and its new Windows OS is important to the company because it can now consolidate product lines such as servers which have up to now had several different architectures.

Jim Zafarana, vp of worldwide marketing, HP workstation business unit, said, "The single operating system running both technical and business applications is designed to allow our customers to decrease desktop hardware, training and IT costs while increasing performance." Information about pricing and availability is available at www.hp.com/workstations/products/itanium/operating.html.

HP is a leading global provider of products, technologies, solutions and services to consumers and businesses. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. HP completed its acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. on May 3, 2002.