9 Feb 2010, 0958 hrs IST

SAN FRANCISCO – US technology titans IBM and Intel have rolled out powerful new computer chips designed for businesses continually demanding more from networks and data centers.

Intel introduced an Itanium processor 9300 series developed under the code name "Tukwila" that it touts as delivering twice the performance of prior generation chips.

The 9300 series features two billion transistors per chip and four "cores," mini-brains that process data.

"With the Gartner Group predicting a 650 percent growth in IT data over the next five years, businesses need increasingly powerful and scalable enterprise servers," Intel said in a release.

Intel also said the chips are built to improve the ability of computer systems to recover from otherwise fatal errors.

IBM launched new Power7 servers built to manage intensely demanding computing environments such as smart electrical grids or real-time financial markets analysis.

Power 7 chips at the heart of the systems perform four times as fast as the previous generation Power 6 microprocessors, tending to 32 tasks simultaneously, according to IBM.

Power 7 systems incorporate technology tailored for services that rely on "processing an enormous number of concurrent transactions and data while analyzing that information in real time," IBM said.

"In addition, the new systems enable clients to manage current applications and services at less cost with technology breakthroughs in virtualization, energy savings, and more cost-efficient use of memory," according to IBM.

The announcements by Intel and IBM come as Oracle weighs into the market by acquiring Sun Microsystems in a deal valued at 7.4 billion dollars.

Oracle has vowed to put its resources behind improving and marketing Sun Solaris server systems built on SPARC microprocessor technology.

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