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The second Kittson release, Oracle alleged, would have an Itanium core but be built into a Xeon-compatible socket, a design which Oracle wrote would help HP migrate its customers to the Xeon platform over the next five years.
Those moves would cost HP nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars, Oracle wrote in the cross complaint.
In 2008, HP and Intel signed an "Itanium Collaboration Agreement" under which HP would pay Intel $440 million over five years to continue development of the Itanium through the release of the Kittson model in 2012, Oracle alleged.
Oracle further alleged that HP agreed in October of 2010 to pay Intel an additional $250 million-plus to produce the Itanium for an additional three years and to update its roadmap.
However, Oracle alleged, HP deliberately withheld information from its customers about the Itanium processor plans in order to protect its Integrity server revenue stream.
"In fact, if it became clear that the purpose of the 'extended roadmap' was simply to produce a processor that would migrate customers to x86 in five years, a customer making an IT decision today would not wait for HP’s Xeon hybrid solution to come to market—they would simply move today, as would many of HP’s current customers. In fact, Intel has sought to reveal the socket-compatible nature of Kittson publicly numerous times and HP has blocked it from doing so. The market still does not know about it," Oracle wrote in its cross complaint.
Oracle also wrote that it made its decision to stop development of the next generation of its database, named 12g, in March of 2011 based on general market signals of the Itanium processor's market decline and discussions with Intel executives about the Itanium, and that at the time it had no knowledge of the alleged "secret HP-Intel deals."
Oracle has previously stated that it will support the Itanium-based servers on current versions of its software through 2018. However, Oracle alleged in the cross complaint, "HP nonetheless chose to defame Oracle at every turn with allegations that Oracle was refusing to support existing Itanium system users."
Oracle backed up that allegation by citing several media reports, including some from CRN, in which HP executives allegedly gave false and misleading statements about Oracle in relation to the Itanium server.
Oracle and HP had a decades-long relationship in which HP's mission-critical servers were one of the top platforms for Oracle's database and middleware products.
However, that relationship started to unravel when Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, a move which gave Oracle its own server platform. Oracle has since moved to integrate its software and server hardware into tightly-integrated appliances.
Oracle declined to further discuss the unsealed documents.
An Intel spokesperson, in an emailed response to CRN, said the company has not announced any specific product plans. Intel works on a multi-year planning horizon, and product roadmaps, whether for Itanium or for Xeon, do not go beyond that, the spokesperson said.
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