"It continues to be a rather lucrative market. For those customers than run Unix we want to continue to have a solution," Bryant said.

Servers with Itanium chips are mainly offered by Hewlett-Packard as part of its high-end Integrity server line. However, there has been speculation that Intel would stop developing Itanium, which the company has denied.

The Itanium processor architecture has been at the center of a highly publicized lawsuit between Oracle and HP. Oracle said in March 2011 it would stop software development for HP's Itanium servers, claiming the processor was reaching end of life. HP sued Oracle in June that year for breach of contract, and a judge ruled in HP's favor, ordering Oracle to continue porting software to the Itanium platform. The case's second phase will begin in February next year to determine whether Oracle breached the contact and the damages it may owe.

Microsoft and Red Hat have already dropped and Linux respectively.

The Itanium processor business continues to be lucrative, Bryant said. It makes up only three percent of server units, but nearly 25 percent of the revenue.