Chip Delay

Intel Corp. has postponed the debut of its first 64-bit processor for at least three months. Intel won’t begin selling the chip, dubbed Itanium, until its fourth quarter, company officials said. Intel’s Pentium line of central processing units, the company’s most sophisticated on the market, are 32-bit chips. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company previously had targeted a third-quarter roll-out for the Itanium, designed for use in sophisticated computer servers rather than in PCs. Such servers power the Internet and run large corporate databases. Intel is touting its new 64-bit chip as a faster, more reliable processor for sifting through data stored on servers and speeding up Net transactions. The Itanium is being held back because Intel wants to spend more time testing the chip to detect any possible bugs before the product hits the market. The new chip represents Intel’s attempt to compete in the high-end server market against chips designed by IBM Corp., Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and SGI.