Red Hat Releases x86_64 Technology Preview, GinGin
HTMLSpinnr writes "Red Hat announced today it's release of GinGin64, a "Technology Preview" (read: not beta) of Red Hat's AMD64 technology. You can grab a copy here or at one of Red Hat's various mirrors. Though the version number listed in the release notes is 8.0.95, inside sources say it's based on Red Hat 9 plus some updates."
How are you going to benchmark it?
The only meaningful benchmark IMO is processing_power/cost. A comparison based on clock speed would be pretty useless since architectures are different, and Itanium is so incredibly expensive. I'm pretty sure that even if x86_64 is slower it's much cheaper to get enough CPUs for your needs than to buy an Itanium.