HP wouldn't discuss the products ahead of a press conference scheduled for Tuesday next week. But it has hinted that Intel's quad-core "Tukwila" processors, launched in February, will allow it to update its Integrity servers with a more modern, modular design that lets customers scale them more easily and reduce ownership costs.

The updates have been a long time coming for Integrity customers. Aside from slightly faster processors, HP hasn't made significant changes to most of the systems since the Integrity brand was introduced in 2003. In particular, its high-end Superdome server has had the same chassis since its introduction .

Intel's Itanium brand could also use a lift from the new systems. HP is by far the biggest seller of Itanium-based servers, so the chip's future depends in large part on how customers respond to the new systems. With Microsoft and Red Hat both recently announcing plans to new OSes for Itanium, the HP-UX and OpenVMS platforms become even more critical to its survival.

"It's definitely a huge launch for Itanium," said Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist with In-Stat.

The competes mainly with IBM's System p servers, based on its Power processors. HP positions its boxes as a "mainframe alternative" for critical business applications that need large memory configurations and high levels of uptime. They include four-processor entry-class systems, 16-processor midrange systems, and the top-end Superdome server, which houses up to 64 Itanium processors.