HP Terminates Itanium Workstations 472
vincecate writes "The largest Itanium system maker,
HP, has terminated its Itanium workstations.
It seems their workstation customers have spoken in favor of x64.
In related news, Intel expects to ship
over 100,000 Itaniums in all of 2004
while AMD is estimating
1.5 to 2 million AMD64 chips in Q4."
The good news (Score:5, Funny)
you're not the only one mocking the Itanium... (Score:5, Informative)
Snake Oil (Score:3, Insightful)
Luckily for intel, some companies were run by PHBs that didn't have a clue about processor design. In this way, intel managed to kill off development of Alpha (the fastest 64-bit processor in the world), MIPS and PA-RISC. What a way to nail your competition.
Some people were more forward-thinking and that's why PO
x64? (Score:4, Funny)
How Ironic (Score:5, Interesting)
Makes me think about their technical vision
Re:How Ironic (Score:5, Interesting)
Makes me think about their technical vision
Intel sued by DEC for stealing Alpha technology for Pentium
Intel agrees to buy production plant, pay undisclosed cash, continue to make Alphas for DEC
Merced goes on for years, uses lots of Alpha technology.
Revamped as Itanium
Sells for huge $$$$ when it hits the market
Still sells for $$$$
Intel gets clubbed like a baby harp seal by AMD x64
Seems somewhere in that long build up to the release of the Itanium they forgot how they made their money in the first place. Psst! Processors are a commodity.
Intel may have a lot of better technology than AMD, but AMD has clearly shown they've learned a lot about getting a product out there.
Re:How Ironic (Score:3, Interesting)
Intel's known about this, yet their first dual-core P4s are going to have one tap on the memory bus per core, instead of arbitration logic to keep it at one bus tap per die, thereby keeping their bus speeds up.
Long Live AMD.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How Ironic (Score:3, Informative)
Heh. I've heard that before:
"The Pentium Pro is a server CPU; it is not suitable for desktop use.." - Intel, 1996
"The Pentium II, based on the Pentium Pro core..." - Intel, 1999
"The 486 is intended as a CPU for high-end computing needs." - Intel, 1991
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How Ironic (Score:3, Insightful)
> serve-your-shitty-perl-app-over-the-web"
> processor.
Well that's too bad for Intel, because that's where the money is.
Re:How Ironic (Score:3, Informative)
From my perspective, IA64 is already dead.
Re:How Ironic (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, to their benefit, Itanium was not, nor ever will be, a workstation processor. Heck, it's not even a "serve-your-shitty-perl-app-over-the-web" processor.
It's a HPC processor.
It's a low-volume proc. Intel will either watch as the Itanium is eclipsed by everybody+dog or lose money on the whole thing. Generic processors beat niche every time - that's how Intel made their fortune.
Re:How Ironic (Score:4, Informative)
So far as I can tell, the HPC shops are largely shunning the Itanium.
I have access to about 10 supercomputers at various locations: not one of them is based on the Itanium. We have clusters based on Xeons, clusters based on Opterons, machines based on Alpha 21264, IBM computers based on Power4 processors, and Cray X1s, based on their own proprietary chips.
But *not one* machine based on Itaniums.
On the Top500 Supercomputing sites list, only 13/500 are using Itaniums. 14/500 are using AMD processors.....
The Itanium may be an HPC processor, but it's one that the HPC community mostly doesn't want.
--PM
Re:How Ironic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
HP's current innovation strategy may be sumarized in the their unwritten Mission statement:
Carly Gets Paid.
Under Carly, the Calculator division has had the guts ripped out of it, the printer division has had the guys ripped out of it, the server division has had the guts ripped out of it.
Um.. what else does HP make?
And Carly gets her US$20m a year, despite the fact that none of her "innovations" have moved the company forward.
Re:How Ironic (Score:4, Insightful)
Luckily some of the old HP spirit is left in Agilent.
Re:How Ironic (Score:4, Informative)
HP was originally in the scientific instrument business. That makes Agilent the true successor, not the current computer company HP. I'ld say what remains at HP are mostly the ruins of DEC, and Compaq. The best of those companies seems to have left for other opportunities.
Re:How Ironic (Score:5, Funny)
iPods... oh wait...
Re:How Ironic (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and don't call me sloane.
Oh, right.
As an MBA in training, I can see exactly where MBA and technology diverge. MBAs are great for ideas on how to manage people, finances, suppliers, clients, to anticipate market trends etc etc... and a name school gets you great contacts (what I don't have.. but hey, its 1/10th the price of the Harvard BS course).
What it doesn't teach you is how to work R&D. The economics of R&D don't work the same way as everything else does. IBM get it. Xerox got it. AT&T may still get it. Sun hopefully will get it again.S
Stuff you do now may pay off for years. In some cases for IBM and AT&T, decades. MBAs don't think on those scales. Long term is 8 quarters... 2 years.
Carly might be great in charge of the Sales part of HP, the pure commerse stuff... but she doesn't have any idea about how to run and engineering firm because she's not an engineer.
Re:How Ironic (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps when Carly gets done bleeding HP dry, Agilent can buy back the name on the cheap. By then, though, they may not want it.
Agilent needs to come out with a nice, well-built RPN calculator...
Re:How Ironic (Score:3, Insightful)
Could it be? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Could it be? (Score:5, Informative)
Bzzzt... wrong answer.
In AMD64 chips, the chipset doesn't have the memory controller - it's in the CPU.
AMD's CPU-to-DDR latency is much lower than Intel's.
Re:Could it be? (Score:5, Informative)
A64 FX's and Opterons support dual channel ddr and have much lower latencies then intel at the same mhz (400mhz ddr X 2). Usually the FX's and Opteron's win the memory bandwidth benchmarks.
As low power AMD has a line of mobile barton core processors that use as little power as 45 and even 35 watts. They can also be placed in a destop motherboard. The xp2400 35 watt is also under $100. But there is a good chance the pentium-m uses less power but they are only found on certain laptops (can't be bought).
AMD64 include consumer processors (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, the ASP of Itanium is a lot higher, so Intel need to sell a lot fewer Itaniums to get the same money back as AMD. On the other hand, AMD haven't sunk $billions into K8!
Top 10 (Score:5, Funny)
10. HP decided that they didn't want to go down with the Itanic
9. Hear that flushing sound? That's billions of dollars being invested into a lemon.
8. HP must of realized it was a 64-bit Pinto.
7. HP's just upset that they didn't get to sit on the bow and yell, "I'm the King of Computers!"
6. HP's Itanic line is sunk.
5. "The Itanic is the most advanced chip of her kind. She's practically unsinkable!"
4. HP didn't want to be compared to Leonardo Di Caprio
3. HP Execs suddenly realized that Di Caprio dies in the end
2. Intel assured HP that the Itanic was not sinking, despite being hit by a AMDBerg
1. "My clock wiiilllll, count on and on!"
Sorry, I just couldn't resist.
Re:Top 10 (Score:5, Funny)
Eck
Re:Top 10 (Score:3, Funny)
A victory for 32 bit backwards compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)
Good job AMD!
Re:A victory for 32 bit backwards compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)
Tell that to Microsoft.
Microsoft is running most of their software on AMD64 in 32bit, thanks to that backward compatibility, but you know they're sweating over getting full 64 out, since Linux has been 64.
Funny how Intel and Microsoft have to scramble to keep up with underdogs, isn't it?
Re:A victory for 32 bit backwards compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
If you really like what Apple and IBM are doing with and for Open source, support them by buying their hardware and running whatever operating system you wish (be it linux for PPC, one of the BSD's or OSX).
I laugh when I see open source advocated saying how evil MS is and yet they probably helped put MSFT in the position they are now in by not buying Corel/Wordperfect products instead of MS Office and buying PC's bundled with Windows instead of now dead platforms like the BeBox, Commodore Amiga, Next Cube. Even if they had bought macs from Apple, MS would not have the power it now has in the industry and Corel/Wordperfect would still have a significant portion of the office market.
I also feel that Open Office should stop trying to closely emulate MS Office and try to produce something much better.
Re:A victory for 32 bit backwards compatibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that AMD's goal has to be to make money, which requires that they get customers, it would seem that it is a great idea. Customers seem to like the idea of their applications continuing to work.
I honestly don't know what Intel was thinking, to be honest. Did they really think that users were going to jump to using a 64-bit chip, which had something like a 1/10th of the applications available for it as x86, just because Intel made it?
Re:A victory for 32 bit backwards compatibility (Score:3, Informative)
64bit software runs faster on the amd64 than 32bit software - any slowdown due to larger instruction size (negligable since the 64bit data path can read more data in parallel anyway) is more than offset by the vastly increased number of registers.
How the times change... (Score:5, Funny)
O tempora...
Yeah, Itanium tanked... So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
BFD. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Some products take off, some don't.
Itanium looks like a good architecture for transaction processing, at least on paper. Turns out the market was more interested in backwards compatibility.
Re:Yeah, Itanium tanked... So what? (Score:3, Informative)
IA64 is proprietary and closed, AMD64 is not. That's why Intel are the bad guys as far as this Itanic thing is concerned. Also, if they are selling something you will never be able to buy to your home, it's natural to root for the solution that you might very well be able to afford yourself.
Re:Yeah, Itanium tanked... So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, Itanium tanked... So what? (Score:3, Informative)
They shifted too many things off of the CPU and into software when that didn't preform well they started trying to optimise it. It's a situation that reminds me of NT and microkernels.
The result is something that needs a huge die size just to preform on par with the Xeon and thanks to the huge die size it will always be priced much higher. I keep hearing that smaller transistors will
Re:Yeah, Itanium tanked... So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
2) These predictions were borne out by the fact that Itanium performance has always sucked, especially considering the enormous die size, cost and heat dissipation.
3) It looked like Itanium might win in the market despite its technical limitations, just because of Intel's vast marketing budget, its momentum, and its monopoly leverage forcing OEMs to stay away from technically superior alternatives like AMD64.
4) Thankfully this hasn't happened. The technically superior, open solution is winning. Thanks AMD.
Re:Yeah, Itanium tanked... So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah. A few years ago, the compiler guys from HP came over to Stanford to speak about Itanium compilers. They didn't have a clue how to solve the problems they faced.
Re:Yeah, Itanium tanked... So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, Itanium tanked... So what? (Score:3, Informative)
> Itanium for Windows and Linux are pretty godlike
> in my experience.
I'm sure they're good, but they're not good enough.
> Look at AMD benchmarks and usually they are done
> with the Intel compiler.
That'd be the x86 compiler, not the Itanium compiler.
> Your definition of sucked differs from mine.
Stringing vast arrays of processors together to build supercomputers tells you almost nothing about the performance of the individual processors.
Re:Yeah, Itanium tanked... So what? (Score:5, Informative)
(* Itanium2 doesn't even do next-line prefetching!)
Explicit speculative loads was a major mistake because in many kinds of code the compiler cannot place speculative loads far enough ahead of the actual use for it to pay off. Often the address to be loaded from is simply not known far in advance of the load (consider executing the C code "x = a->b->c"). So Itaniums spend a lot of time stalled waiting on memory accesses. That's why Intel spends so many transistors on gigantic on-chip caches, to try to reduce that pain. The architecture's pretty good for workloads with very regular and compiler-analyzable access patterns (regular number crunching, SpecFP) but it's bad for everything else (servers, user applications, irregular numeric codes).
Yes, IA-64 is a aggressive, radical, clean and somewhat novel design, so it's understandable that some geeks love it. However, it is not a good design.
If it was a good design, then with Intel engineering, 5x the transistor count, and no backward compatibility requirements, it would be absolutely crushing Opteron performance. Instead it is merely competitive.
BTW it is quite odd to consider IA-64 a small tweak over RISC chips. IA-64 is the most dissimilar of all viable architectures today.
The low hanging fruit was picked decades ago. (Score:3, Insightful)
x = a->b->c also stumps hardware pre-loading.
itanium 2 doesn't do next-line prefetching, but it does read 2 bundles of instructions per cycle. This, depending on the density of those bundles, does everything that a prefetch might do, and more given available execution units.
Your contention is correct that itanium doesn't solve all t
Re:Yeah, Itanium tanked... So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Their decision to support 32-bit mode in their x86 64 bit platform was a wise decisions and all of us knew that.
Furthermore, AMD keeps forcing Intel to innovate. As long as AMD is around, CPU's will get faster and better and do more per cycle.
Without AMD, we'd not have good competition, and Intel could comfortably cut their R&D costs to turn a bigger profit - their only rival would be PowerPC, and it's not a x86 platform. Let's not forget, Intel is first responsible to its shareholders.
Furthermore without competition, rest assured we'd already have DRM shoved down our throats too.
Re:Yeah, Itanium tanked... So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
bring back alpha (Score:5, Interesting)
- Friendly A.C.
Re:bring back alpha (Score:4, Insightful)
I just don't see that happening. Plus while it may not cost them much to reopen production lines, it would take them away from where they want the market to go, Alpha, as an architecture, was a lot more than just the chip, and performed accordingly. It wasn't just a Math Machine, but also an I/O Machine, for several of the choices made(like having a daughterboard and per-cpu memory in my many configurations, kept bus traffic low, and needed basically less Mhz for the same speed as long as cpu localization was enabled) increasing that trend. Alphas and SPARCs used to be favorite workstation chips for that very reason, not just calculations, but I/O(lots of applications require both, like finite elements). Servers are also I/O hungry, and it makes sense that a chip for one would do well in the other. Now I notice that the bang for the buck department, especially if you factor in I/O and other considerations, Itanic doesn't inspire HP, which, as the people who took their PA chips and merged them with Intel's, are the ones who had the most investment in its success, I can only conclude Itanic sunk...
With Intel selling cpus but having to license ASUS/VIA/ABIT etc... for motherboards, Intel would lose part of the profits. Itanic was a lot more than just a new chip, it was an attempt to kick competitors out, leaving HP and Intel with a dominant position. Thankfully for geeks everywhere, it mostly backfired.
I also believe Intel had to give up the alpha somehow, to a consortium of companies interested in the Alpha chip itself, leader of which was Samsung, at the time.
What about servers? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What about servers? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the Itanium-based servers will continue to be sold because the strength of the Itanium CPU is specifically for large-volume server-based operations.
AMD's Opteron/Athlon64 has succeeded because 1) they are VASTLY cheaper than Itanium CPU's and 2) incorporating the memory controller into the CPU die means that the Opteron/Athlon64 CPU's have nearly as much computing power as the Itanium CPU but does offer the advantages of keeping compatibility with most x86-base
Re:What about servers? (Score:5, Informative)
In the longer run, IMHO it sounds somewhat problematic, considering that all the engineers developing software will be running on x86-64. I.e. the software will first be available on x86-64, more tested etc.
So why should the customer shell out money for an Itanium server instead of an x86-64 server which has better bang-per-buck and runs the software more reliably? In the short run HP can probably contain x86-64 in low end servers, keeping high end stuff reserved for Itanic. But in the long run, they'll have to start providing higher end x86-64 gear too, or their customers will move to a competitor that will.
Should have stuck with Alpha (Score:3, Interesting)
What the hell were they thinking.
Re:Should have stuck with Alpha (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly what I was thinking.
HP and Intel deserve this for killing off the two most powerful processor lines in history.
Back when PA-RISC and Alpha were in production, the gap between them and the next fastest CPU lines were staggering. I used to check the CPU Info Center at Berkeley every time a new one was released, just to see how badly it humiliated the competition (sadly, the CPU Info Center is no longer maintained).
The Athlon (before it was named such) uses the Alpha's bus... and the original slot-A design was compatible with both the Alpha and the Athlon, all you would need to sell a motherboard for the other one is a different BIOS. This was the selling point that convinced many motherboard manufacturers to actually make these boards. Unfortunately, only a tiny handful of companies actually marketed the resulting systems using the Alpha CPUs (mostly in Linux Journal & Linux Magazine as rackmount servers).
They could have done so much more... oh well.
My current favorites are UltraSPARC and PowerPC (with POWER close behind).
So, question for the crowd... (Score:5, Interesting)
An architecture switch breaking x86 ISA compatibility (i.e. emulation is noticeably slower than the original item) would put it on a level playing field with other 64-bit workstation/server-class chips, yet they never seemed to offer either world-beating design improvements or substantial price benefits, or appear as though they would in the future.
This looked like a loser from the first minute I saw it, and I obviously wasn't the only one: I mean, the chip has been "The Itanic" in Register parlance for years now.
Intel, for all their flaws, is a smart company with a lot of smart people working for it. I must just not be seeing the whole picture. They must have had some good reason not to have flushed this project years ago, right?
Re:So, question for the crowd... (Score:5, Insightful)
If there's one thing I've learned from working in high-tech, it's that no matter how smart and capable the grunts are (engineers, etc.) you always have a dim-witted marketing guy or manager steering projects in the wrong direction (and not listening to criticism).
Re:So, question for the crowd... (Score:5, Insightful)
An architecture switch breaking x86 ISA compatibility (i.e. emulation is noticeably slower than the original item) would put it on a level playing field with other 64-bit workstation/server-class chips, yet they never seemed to offer either world-beating design improvements or substantial price benefits, or appear as though they would in the future.
Intel decided to break with the past and start fresh, in hopes that they could make a large leap forward. That's a good goal. But what actually happened was a couple of things:
1. Their experiment failed, in that they didn't get the monstrous across-the-board benefits they expected.
2. They started this back in the days of the Pentium, when it looked like the x86 CPU architecture and instruction set were the big problems. The Itanium design team didn't forsee the crazy lengths that would be taken--by both Intel and AMD--in order to speed up the crappy x86 architecture.
Honestly, you can't fault Intel for trying. Where did chips like the ARM and MIPS come from (two of the most popular non-desktop processors)? From designing a new architecture. That's the same kind of thinking that resulted in the amazing GPUs from ATI and nVidia.
As a footnote, it's somewhat sad to see radical advances in CPUs come to a halt. I'd love to see someone set the industry on its ear.
Re:So, question for the crowd... (Score:3, Insightful)
They started this back in the days of the Pentium, when it looked like the x86 CPU architecture and instruction set were the big problems. The Itanium design team didn't forsee the crazy lengths that would be taken--by both Intel and AMD--in order to speed up the crappy x86 architecture.
The architecture is actually rather nice now. It's only the instruction set that sucks, and that's a fairly small part of the transistor count.
Honestly, you can't fault Intel for trying.
Nope, but I can fault them for
Re:So, question for the crowd... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've heard rumours that Intel wanted to do something radical in the architecture because it would be harder for other vendors (AMD) to clone. That could have forced them into their VLIW design.
When IA-64 was conceived (mid 90s) some research groups (e.g. IMPACT at Illinois) were touting in-order VLIWs with compiler support as the way of the future. Their research had problems but perhaps some key Intel/HP engineers bought into it.
Now imagine that the IA-64 project got rolling and after a few years you've aligned the company around the project and sunk a billion dollars or two into it. Maybe you've even talked it up in the press or with analysts. Many of your best and most senior engineers have staked their careers on the project. Now suppose some of your people have doubts. How hard would it be for them to persuade the company to flush it? Near impossible, I suspect.
It's scary how close we all came to watching AMD go under and IA-64 taking over in spite its inferiority. It would have been a terrible example of monopoly power leading to bad outcomes. Fortunately at this point it's only a matter of time before IA-64 is cancelled. It can't compete with x64 chips which are essentially equivalent but ship in 10x-100x of the volume.
Re:So, question for the crowd... (Score:3, Funny)
I think it's the sunk cost fallacy - "we've already spent $X billion on this, let's throw a few more billion at it until it works."
Re:So, question for the crowd... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a hypothesis: it was a power play to eliminate all competition. It would have been difficult for AMD and others to follow them down this IA64 road.
Corrolary: Intel wanted to establish compiler dominance. I work for a compiler company that produces every part of the source to machine translation for our compiler. Intel told us we would not be able to do an IA64 port all the way to machine code and that we'd have to use their assembler. This was shocking. Upon probing this, the Intel guy would not relent. He said it was near impossible for anyone but Intel to produce machine code for IA64. For over 20 years we've done countless ports, to some really weird hardware. Our expert said it would take 2 years to do the port. The most time we *ever* spent doing a port was a year and that was for a Cray (and a lot of that was for operating system interface issues).
Re:So, question for the crowd... (Score:3, Informative)
Attempts to get away from x86:
iAPX432
i860
i960 (still viable in the embedded market)
IA-64.
Itanium will crush all... hardly (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Itanium will crush all... hardly (Score:3, Interesting)
Damn, and I just ordered IA-64 Linux dev. CD.... (Score:4, Funny)
That's actually quite sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, many people don't like it. And OK, it's complex. And OK, many people are making other quite good 64-bit processors.
If its competition was Power or MIPS, then OK, I'd say that the worse it is, let IA-64 die, but x86 (and x86-64 as well) is UGLY and laden with all kinds of OLD JUNK. Come on, it will be junked sooner or later. Granted, Intel can make high-performance x86s, but that at a price of devoting over 1/3 of the stages for decoding!
Or, let's put it that way. It is a Good Thing (TM) to have several different architectures. If all we'll be stuck with will be x86, it'll be quite sad.
Re:That's actually quite sad (Score:5, Interesting)
The old junk is a constant overhead, but processor architectures keep getting bigger and more complex with or without the old junk. Processors are now so large that the old junk is a tiny percentage of the total logic.
All modern processors translate their user-visible instruction set on-the-fly into some other internal format anyway. The X86 ISA is just a kind of bytecode, and it's a relatively compact one at that. It's easier for compilers to generate than Itanium bytecodes, so it's not hard to see why X86 is still around.
I kind of doubt that X86 will ever get junked. Now that X86 has 64-bit addressing, there's little reason to create any new user-visible changes to the instruction set. Processors can continue to improve and change their internal architecture without bothering the users with silly implementation details.
Re:That's actually quite sad (Score:3, Informative)
Itanium 6 integer units shortpipeline, 3 branchunits, multiple FMAC, smaller CORE size than netburst on equal process. Yes, on same process itanium2 core is smaller than netburst. Biggest block after bus interface and L3 cache on itanium2 are block called IA32 and FP-units. Itanium brings huge execution resources with low die area costs, and then puts huge caches that have redundancy so that MFG costs wouldn't be much worse than
Re:That's actually quite sad (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, the decode stages are a pain (though trace cache helps), but in return you get significantly higher instruction density than competing RISC chips which helps with your instruction cache.
OTOH the IA-64 architecture was designed around unfounded implementation assumptions like "we won't be doing out-of-order execution". Sorry, WRONG. Sometimes polishing up old junk gives better results than designing completely new and differently broken junk.
Intel outsider (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news, Honda outsells Bentley. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Opteron isn't in the same league as the Itanium, no matter how much AMDroids wish it were. AMD needs to be comparing Opteron/AMD64 sales to Xeon/Pentium4 sales. Itanium is a very high end processor and it's one of the best you can buy for certain high-end applications.
Not to say Intel didn't make a mistake in trying to push Itanium too early as a general purpose CPU - it's clearly not.
TFA? (Score:5, Interesting)
Give credit where credit is due.. EM64T is clone crap, and is signifigantly slower than the AMD chips.
Re:TFA? (Score:4, Interesting)
From What I Remember:
Intel had difficulties in spitting out enough 386 chips, so they drew up an agreement to co-fab the 386. By the time the 486 came out, Intel figured it could spit out enough 486es themselves. They tried the initial brand differentiation, calling it the i486, and tried to trademark the 'i'. Judge said "you gotta bekidding me, trademark a letter? If I do that, then I only need 25 other ocmpanies to trademark the english language". As an aside, he wasn't that far off, both Zilog and Datsun tried to trademark the letter Z. Anyways, they couldn't, so for the next generation, out comes a made-up trademarkable name, Pentium.
Just one little note... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Itanium is a high-end workstation/server chip. ONLY. -- While the AMD64 architecture is AMD's entire product line right now. It's their desktop chip; it's their workstation chip; it's their server chip; hell, it's even their notebook/laptop chip.
Whoever submitted this article seems to think that every AMD64 sold is going to be going into the high-end server market. Either that, or he thinks that home users are buying Itaniums. Funny... I don't seem to recall ever seeing a laptop with an Itanium in it.
A more honest comparison would be the 800 series Opterons vs. Itaniums, the 200 series Opterons vs. Xeons, and Athlon64's vs. Pentium 4's.
Re:Just one little note... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not anymore it's not. Delete "workstation" from that sentence.
Whoever submitted this article seems to think that every AMD64 sold is going to be going into the high-end server market.
No, he just thinks that disparate total sales actually mean something. The AMD64 is good for workstations, servers, laptops, email, and videogames. Itanium is now server-only. The fact that AMD64 has so many consumer sales actually makes it more attractive for high end use, because the volume drives the per-chip cost way down, and boosts R&D reinvestment.
Re:Just one little note... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Itanium is a high-end workstation/server chip. ONLY.
If you read older articles from the times when Itanium was still Merced, Intel pretended they wanted to replace the old x86 line with the new IA-64 processors in the long term. The big irons (and workstations) have been only the first step in this plan.
Would be interesting to know, if Intel still hopes to see this coming true some day, or if they have already buried those hopes completely.
Re:Just one little note... (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny shift in /. mindshare (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, everyone jumped on the bandwagon spouting "what were they thinking? Trying to define a new architecture.. dumb asses!"
So, which is it?? I learned architecture and assembly on a Motorola 68k processor. So, the x86 stuff has always seemed kludgy to me. Have the problems been overcome, or do people just not care anymore?
Re:Funny shift in /. mindshare (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it's "Oh my god, this thing makes CISC look simple, it makes the x86 look streamlined, and hasn't Intel tried the 'lets make the compiler scream in agony' thing a couple of times already?".
There's also a lot of x86-emulation support, including a whole bunch of special-purpose registers, but hopefully they'll be able to drop that in future versions.
This time compiler technology may be up to the job of generating good code fo
This is interesting, what's Intel going to do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now I was bidding on a dual itanium on ebay a while back, it seemed like a cool piece of exotic hardware with decent performance (my alpha is nearing EOL..;) 40GB of SCSI drive, 2 800Mhz IA64s, 2GB of RAM. I bailed at $800 and it went for $975; original price of the hardware was $12k to $14k. The alarming thing was when I was searching IBM's site for information, it was practically non-existant. I asked some employees to look around inside, it's a real machine the specs are correct, no info because they literally sold under 500 of them.
There used to be all sorts of Linux on IA64 sites, they've been drying up. People are still doing stuff but it looks like some well backed projects have just dried up. Like the trillian project. Also, it doesn't seem like anybody is making an IA64 linux distribution anymore, there are some projects but all the big boys look like they have one they made back a couple years and never sold it and never updated it, SuSE has an 8. Redhat has a 7 (?!? RH 7? How old is that? Is that even a 21st century release?) and it looks like a RHEL 2.1 which is more reasonable, Mandrake has never been terribly strong off of IA32 but they have an 8.1 which is ancient and, Debian and Gentoo look like that have projects but they are kind of fossilized. I imagine that once the installer is done for most distros, it's mostly just a job of recompiling packages and then some kind of QA effort or a "beta" labeling goes on everything, not to make it sound easy or anything but once it's built it shouldn't require a huge team to maintain. Maybe Intel would kick in a few dollars too, they need Linux for IA64 internally and if they really want to sell the hardware they need some OS for it.
So Intel has pumped a trmendous amount of money in to IA64, a huge amount of time and they have all but decaired it their future architecture so presumably that leaves them at a bit of a disadvantage should they abandon it. SGI has bet on it. HP has bet on it. It's really down to POWER/PowerPC, x86 and x86-64, and then sort of Sparc. Does Intel keep kicking this dead horse? When does it turn the corner? and how? The next gen chips are all supposed to be socket compatible between the EM64 and IA64, if Intel starts shipping $400 Itaniums then maybe it will start to get some traction but why would you buy one when you can buy an em64 that will run Windows and tons of other software? I don't see how they back out, and I don't see how they can make it win, it looks like AMD has forced their hand and what that really does is make IBM the only contender in enterprise 64bit heavy duty computing right now.
IDC have to revise their 96% mistake (Score:3, Informative)
Being that wrong takes talent. Pulling something out of your ass qualifies as precision work compared to this.
Ouch! (Score:3, Funny)
Wow. I didn't even know they included self-destruct hardware!
There goes VMS on the desktop again... (Score:2, Interesting)
Damn... First the Alpha killed then this.
Guess it's up to SimH on Athlon or P4 to emulate one.
I wish the hell HP ported VMS to IA32 instead 8-).
Bill
Re:There goes VMS on the desktop again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There goes VMS on the desktop again... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:hp server (Score:3, Funny)
He doesn't provide 24/7 technical support but he will harass your family for free.
Re:hp server (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think they will care. Most people in the business of buying servers seem to do. Comp... er, HP Proliants are probably the most popular Linux servers at the moment.
Re:hp server (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:hp server (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm... while I agree with regards to the quality of those machines, I think that provided you have no problem with fixing your own hardware, for a personal web/file server I'd want some preferably self assembled box made from quality components that I can get at the average computer store.
Yeah, HP offers decent service for a price, but they really can't beat the 10 mins it takes me to go fix a new disk/mobo/cp/memory, and they really c
Re:Low power CPUs? (Score:2, Informative)
AMD sell a 35W Opteron, 1.8GHz I believe, I'm not sure. Maybe it is 55W @ 2GHz.
OTOH AMD's consumer processors include Cool'n'Quiet which downclocks the processor when you don't need lots of processing power, and hence cuts the power consumption a lot. With a decent fan the fan will also slow down.
Or
Re:Low power CPUs? (Score:3, Informative)
90nm A64s seem to draw much less power than 130nm A64s.
There is also Transmeta [www.transmeta] which produces the Efficeon CPU and VIA [via.com.tw] which makes EPIA.
You may also get an AMD Geode [amd.com]
Re:Low power CPUs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Try a palmtop processor (Score:3, Insightful)
Even laptop processors run too hot.. The centrino uses a smaller amount of power, proportional to the computation being done. It also implements heat throttling, so I wonder how effective it would be if you remove the fan completely (probably not very effective at all) since the geometry is quite small and the heat density is high.
Re:Low power CPUs? (Score:3, Interesting)
As written on the CpuIdle [cpuidle.de] site:
"Under normal circumstances the CPU isn't always active but spends much time waiting for the keyboard, harddisk or CD-ROM. What would be more logical than to turn off the CPU for that period? That's exactly what the HLT machine instruction (Opcode F4) does.
Modern operating systems like Linux execute the HLT instructio
Re:Low power CPUs? (Score:3, Interesting)
You obviously don't run windows.
Seriously, you are probably right... but then I use my machine principally as a home entertainment centre, and having a nice fast CPU means I can watch nicely compressed DivX movies (95% of which I own, but DVDs are fragile) with full AC3 5.1 sound without skips.
A friend of mine recently bough a philips dvp-642 (I think) with DivX playback. It obvious the difference in processing power. He suffers a lot of pixelation
Workstations != Servers (Score:3)
Now that HP will stop making Itanium servers...
Re-read the original post, please. HP is discontinuing Itanium workstations, not servers.
For all its flaws, Itanium does have more headroom to grow than the x86-64 architecture. The whole reason HP and Intel got into bed over Itanium and its EPIC [clemson.edu] architecture was because it's getting harder and harder to wring more performance out of a chip by adding parallel instruction pipelines. In order to crank clockspeeds higher, those pipelines have to get longer
Re:Workstations != Servers (Score:4, Insightful)
Predication's nice, but it wastes resources when you can predict branches accurately, which you can most of the time. And the big bottleneck is not branch misprediction pipeline flushes (~30 cycles), it's cache misses (100-1000 cycles). That's where Itanium really hurts.
But I know that people will keep talking about the "forward-looking" "greater headroom" IA-64 architecture right up until it gets cancelled.
Re:Lets all bash Intel (again) (Score:4, Insightful)