20 ms·

Oracle ordered to pay HP $3B in Itanium case

106 points by nairteashop 10y ago

rrmm 10y ago
Intel has had some bad luck trying to move past x86. ia432, i860, i960 (which found niche markets), and ia64. The revisions to the sales forecasts from market research companies were ugly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Itanium_Sales_Forecasts_edit.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Itanium_Sales_Forecasts_e... And it killed MIPS and ALPHA architectures on the server, but I guess ended up pushing everyone towards x86 while ia64 was delayed until AMD jumped in an released x86-64.
- krylon 10y ago
  Given the ambitious plans of making ia64 THE architecture for high-end servers, that was an EPIC failure (painful pun fully intentional...). About the only (major) vendor that uses Itanics is HP, and when Intel decides they no longer want to build them, HP is in trouble, unless they manage to get The Machine ready first, which I am not overly optimistic about (but happy to be proven wrong).
  - ghaff 10y ago
    HPE has already largely switched its Itanium-based product lines to x86.
    - krylon 10y ago
      Thanks for the info, I did not know that.
  - microtherion 10y ago
    While the Itanium as such was a big failure, it may have been a strategic triumph overall, as several RISC vendors scaled back or stopped their own efforts in anticipation of switching to Itanium. Once Intel decided to switch to x86-64, it does not look like they paid a big price to catch up (thanks to cross licensing, they could easily get the IP, and they still had their manufacturing strengths), so it's not clear to me that Intel faced ANY disadvantages in the long run (as opposed to their partners).
    - gaius 10y ago
      Yep Itanic killed SGI for example. MIPS are still going tho'!
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  It's even worse than that. Intel acquired Alpha, tried to jointly license it with Samsung, and that failed too. I have no idea what the status of that IP is. They should probably try to open it up like OpenPOWER to see if anything comes of it. Meanwhile, its legacy remains in Shinwei processors that likely came from stolen I.P. and power supercomputers. ;) Far as their failures, I think the reason is that they always do something simpler and better but then add some weird stuff that screws it up. Gotta maintain backward compatibility where possible plus make compilers easy. A great example of doing it right would be i960 w/out the BiiN crap, with C compatibility, and x86 emulation a la Transmeta or Loongson. Instead, they did no x86 or C compatibility plus Ada support. Countering market demand killed it even if market was being short-sighted. Better approach is Cambridge's CHERI which provides both benefits and tooling compatible enough for FreeBSD: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/ https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/ Another good example of doing it right is Hardbound which experimented on x86 ISA: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/acg/papers/asplos08_hardbound.pdf https://www.cis.upenn.edu/acg/papers/asplos08_hardbound.pdf These two both drastically improve an important area of CPU's, mainly security or reliability, while maintaining as much compatibility as possible with existing investments. The CPU's and compilers do most of the work actually. Many of the good designs also modify only a small part of CPU investment and/or compiler to reuse those too. So, my recommendation for Intel is to stop trying to get clever (Itanium, SGX) in favor of copying stuff that works, makes sense, is backward compatible, and has major reuse of x86.
  - rrmm 10y ago
    Intel has always used the x86 to add incremental improvements which are aimed at improving bottlenecks (Pentium 4 not withstanding). The bad side is that x86 is a multilayered blob of random features cobbled together; (I'm glad AMD got to x86-64 first). But it's produced a processor that offers useful things to people along with backwards compatibility. And that seems to be what people want. I wonder if deprecating and eventually removing the ugly parts of the architecture over time would work for Intel (even if they had to bifurcate the architecture). What doesn't work for Intel (and its customers) is huge revolutionary new archs with straight-out-of-research advanced features and no compatibility.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  I believe if AMD hadn't released x86-64, our desktops would be running on Itaniums. It would take some time to sort of the issues, but given the Wintel stronghold on the desktop, everyone would be moving screaming into Itanium and feel happy about it later on. But AMD gave people an alternative, so Itanium died.
  - newscracker 10y ago
    The Wintel platform (stack) has relied on backward compatibility for long to hold on to the userbase. So moving to Itanium just wasn't in its blood or character and wouldn't have happened easily even if AMD hadn't jumped in with x64. The Itanium architecture and processor development was happening for a very, very long time (code name "Merced", IIRC) and didn't have much to show for due to incompatibility with x86.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Sure it would have been a slow process, but Windows was already available and Microsoft could have done just like Apple did. Intel would announce x86 EOL and legacy apps would be emulated or JiTted on Itanium. Their problem was that Intel wasn't the only company producing x86 chips.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Also happened for VMS and AS/400. Further, recall that Transmeta invented HW JIT for x86 to run it on power-efficient, non-x86 corr. Finally, Loongson is doing x86 emulation on top of MIPS multicore. So, there's plenty precedent that your scenario could've played out. Don't forget alternative, though, where Centaur/VIA could just receive a gigantic shift in business their way. Or AMD just keeps accelerating x86. Actually, AMD64 seems inevitable in this scenario.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    No way. At the time x86-64 came out, nobody needed it enough to pay extra for it, and that's still true for a large number of users today. Switching architectures just to get to 64 bits was never going to happen. Itanium would have had to bring a lot more to the table than that, and it indisputably didn't.
Jgrubb 10y ago
scha·den·freu·de /ˈSHädənˌfroidə/ noun pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune.
- gaius 10y ago
  Why is there a word for it in German? Also doppelganger. Must happen alot there!
  - bostonpete 10y ago
    Schadenfreude is an English word. Virtually all English words are originated or derived from other languages...
    - euyyn 10y ago
      That's like replying to his words without really thinking about what he meant. Schadenfreude is an obvious borrowing from German. His question is why did they have a word for it in the first place.
      - bostonpete 10y ago
        Well, my point still stands. Given that the vast majority of English words are borrowed from other languages, why don't we ask the same question about all sorts of words? Maybe this word is uniquely German and doesn't have an equivalent in other languages -- I don't know enough about other languages to know that without further investigation -- but the mere fact that a word was borrowed from German to English doesn't seem like reason enough to ask why it's a German word.
reallydontask 10y ago
I heard at a conference from some HP exec, that they sold loads of HP Integrity servers to Asian customers mainly so that they could host MS SQL Server on those big boxes, which I found surprising
- krylon 10y ago
  On the one hand, IIRC, Windows Server on Itanium was almost useless for anything but running SQL Server. On the other hand, I think I remember reading a couple of years ago that per CPU core, Xeons were already beating Itaniums in performance for database workloads. The main advantage apparently is that you can stuff lots of CPUs into an Integrity server, but mostly a cluster of smaller x86_64 machines has a good chance of being faster and cheaper.
  - yuhong 10y ago
    I wonder if any Opteron node controllers caught on. The fun thing is that by the time Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2000 was released for Itanium, AMD had already released the Opteron, but the B1 stepping had plenty of problems which was probably why they didn't release Athlon 64 until the C0 stepping.
- coredog64 10y ago
  For the longest time, Microsoft was recommending Itanic to customers that needed the absolute best SQL Server performance.
- Jweb_Guru 10y ago
  Databases that can afford to microoptimize for architecture really benefit from chips like Itanium, so it makes sense.
scriptproof 10y ago
They complained to be screwed by Google with Java, that is false, but at the same time are not afraid to screw HP. They had a contract to a long term support of Itanium and dropped it after one year to annoy HP (there were several trials between the two companies at this moment).
- gogopuppygogo 10y ago
  Actually makes me feel good to read that they are on the hook for this given how their customers were left in a lurch over this.
youdontknowtho 10y ago
OUCH. It's weird that companies that companies who compete so fiercely in the same markets really ever manage to work together. Once Oracle became a systems manufacturer HP had to know that they would boff them. From a technical perspective, the stuff that HP has in Nonstop, OpenVMS, and Super Dome are really impressive. I read that they sold OpenVMS to a third party that is busy porting to x64. Looking forward to running it in VM's for fun...because I have a weird sense of fun. Stop judging me.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  You heard right: https://vmssoftware.com/about_faq.html https://vmssoftware.com/about_faq.html
pinewurst 10y ago
Several years ago Oracle posted some very amusing HP internal documents about their Itanium efforts: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/itanium-346707.html http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/itanium-346707.h...
- nigwil_ 10y ago
  Thanks for the link. I tried to search for the trial exhibits but didn't find anything comprehensive. Any idea how we could see all the trial exhibits, as in both sides? thanks.
CodeSheikh 10y ago
Karma is a -----
sverige 10y ago
From the article: In a statement, Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley said the company had been providing all its latest software for Itanium servers since Kleinberg's decision. So does this mean they actually continued to work on it, but just told HP there was no market and had stopped work?
- tw04 10y ago
  It didn't matter at that point. Customers fled from Itanium in DROVES when Oracle made the announcement. By the time they quietly decided to keep releasing updates, the damage was done. It was an extremely effective tactic by Oracle to get customers to move away from HP... extremely dirty, but effective.
paulgerhardt 10y ago
Mentioned in the article but always amazing - Bryan Cantrill on Oracle killing Open Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc "Don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison"

106 points by nairteashop 10y ago

rrmm 10y ago

Intel has had some bad luck trying to move past x86. ia432, i860, i960 (which found niche markets), and ia64. The revisions to the sales forecasts from market research companies were ugly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Itanium_Sales_Forecasts_edit.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Itanium_Sales_Forecasts_e... And it killed MIPS and ALPHA architectures on the server, but I guess ended up pushing everyone towards x86 while ia64 was delayed until AMD jumped in an released x86-64.

krylon 10y ago
Given the ambitious plans of making ia64 THE architecture for high-end servers, that was an EPIC failure (painful pun fully intentional...). About the only (major) vendor that uses Itanics is HP, and when Intel decides they no longer want to build them, HP is in trouble, unless they manage to get The Machine ready first, which I am not overly optimistic about (but happy to be proven wrong).
- ghaff 10y ago
  HPE has already largely switched its Itanium-based product lines to x86.
  - krylon 10y ago
    Thanks for the info, I did not know that.
- microtherion 10y ago
  While the Itanium as such was a big failure, it may have been a strategic triumph overall, as several RISC vendors scaled back or stopped their own efforts in anticipation of switching to Itanium. Once Intel decided to switch to x86-64, it does not look like they paid a big price to catch up (thanks to cross licensing, they could easily get the IP, and they still had their manufacturing strengths), so it's not clear to me that Intel faced ANY disadvantages in the long run (as opposed to their partners).
  - gaius 10y ago
    Yep Itanic killed SGI for example. MIPS are still going tho'!
nickpsecurity 10y ago
It's even worse than that. Intel acquired Alpha, tried to jointly license it with Samsung, and that failed too. I have no idea what the status of that IP is. They should probably try to open it up like OpenPOWER to see if anything comes of it. Meanwhile, its legacy remains in Shinwei processors that likely came from stolen I.P. and power supercomputers. ;) Far as their failures, I think the reason is that they always do something simpler and better but then add some weird stuff that screws it up. Gotta maintain backward compatibility where possible plus make compilers easy. A great example of doing it right would be i960 w/out the BiiN crap, with C compatibility, and x86 emulation a la Transmeta or Loongson. Instead, they did no x86 or C compatibility plus Ada support. Countering market demand killed it even if market was being short-sighted. Better approach is Cambridge's CHERI which provides both benefits and tooling compatible enough for FreeBSD: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/ https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/ Another good example of doing it right is Hardbound which experimented on x86 ISA: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/acg/papers/asplos08_hardbound.pdf https://www.cis.upenn.edu/acg/papers/asplos08_hardbound.pdf These two both drastically improve an important area of CPU's, mainly security or reliability, while maintaining as much compatibility as possible with existing investments. The CPU's and compilers do most of the work actually. Many of the good designs also modify only a small part of CPU investment and/or compiler to reuse those too. So, my recommendation for Intel is to stop trying to get clever (Itanium, SGX) in favor of copying stuff that works, makes sense, is backward compatible, and has major reuse of x86.
- rrmm 10y ago
  Intel has always used the x86 to add incremental improvements which are aimed at improving bottlenecks (Pentium 4 not withstanding). The bad side is that x86 is a multilayered blob of random features cobbled together; (I'm glad AMD got to x86-64 first). But it's produced a processor that offers useful things to people along with backwards compatibility. And that seems to be what people want. I wonder if deprecating and eventually removing the ugly parts of the architecture over time would work for Intel (even if they had to bifurcate the architecture). What doesn't work for Intel (and its customers) is huge revolutionary new archs with straight-out-of-research advanced features and no compatibility.
pjmlp 10y ago
I believe if AMD hadn't released x86-64, our desktops would be running on Itaniums. It would take some time to sort of the issues, but given the Wintel stronghold on the desktop, everyone would be moving screaming into Itanium and feel happy about it later on. But AMD gave people an alternative, so Itanium died.
- newscracker 10y ago
  The Wintel platform (stack) has relied on backward compatibility for long to hold on to the userbase. So moving to Itanium just wasn't in its blood or character and wouldn't have happened easily even if AMD hadn't jumped in with x64. The Itanium architecture and processor development was happening for a very, very long time (code name "Merced", IIRC) and didn't have much to show for due to incompatibility with x86.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Sure it would have been a slow process, but Windows was already available and Microsoft could have done just like Apple did. Intel would announce x86 EOL and legacy apps would be emulated or JiTted on Itanium. Their problem was that Intel wasn't the only company producing x86 chips.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      Also happened for VMS and AS/400. Further, recall that Transmeta invented HW JIT for x86 to run it on power-efficient, non-x86 corr. Finally, Loongson is doing x86 emulation on top of MIPS multicore. So, there's plenty precedent that your scenario could've played out. Don't forget alternative, though, where Centaur/VIA could just receive a gigantic shift in business their way. Or AMD just keeps accelerating x86. Actually, AMD64 seems inevitable in this scenario.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  No way. At the time x86-64 came out, nobody needed it enough to pay extra for it, and that's still true for a large number of users today. Switching architectures just to get to 64 bits was never going to happen. Itanium would have had to bring a lot more to the table than that, and it indisputably didn't.

Jgrubb 10y ago

scha·den·freu·de /ˈSHädənˌfroidə/ noun pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune.

gaius 10y ago
Why is there a word for it in German? Also doppelganger. Must happen alot there!
- bostonpete 10y ago
  Schadenfreude is an English word. Virtually all English words are originated or derived from other languages...
  - euyyn 10y ago
    That's like replying to his words without really thinking about what he meant. Schadenfreude is an obvious borrowing from German. His question is why did they have a word for it in the first place.
    - bostonpete 10y ago
      Well, my point still stands. Given that the vast majority of English words are borrowed from other languages, why don't we ask the same question about all sorts of words? Maybe this word is uniquely German and doesn't have an equivalent in other languages -- I don't know enough about other languages to know that without further investigation -- but the mere fact that a word was borrowed from German to English doesn't seem like reason enough to ask why it's a German word.

reallydontask 10y ago

I heard at a conference from some HP exec, that they sold loads of HP Integrity servers to Asian customers mainly so that they could host MS SQL Server on those big boxes, which I found surprising

krylon 10y ago
On the one hand, IIRC, Windows Server on Itanium was almost useless for anything but running SQL Server. On the other hand, I think I remember reading a couple of years ago that per CPU core, Xeons were already beating Itaniums in performance for database workloads. The main advantage apparently is that you can stuff lots of CPUs into an Integrity server, but mostly a cluster of smaller x86_64 machines has a good chance of being faster and cheaper.
- yuhong 10y ago
  I wonder if any Opteron node controllers caught on. The fun thing is that by the time Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2000 was released for Itanium, AMD had already released the Opteron, but the B1 stepping had plenty of problems which was probably why they didn't release Athlon 64 until the C0 stepping.
coredog64 10y ago
For the longest time, Microsoft was recommending Itanic to customers that needed the absolute best SQL Server performance.
Jweb_Guru 10y ago
Databases that can afford to microoptimize for architecture really benefit from chips like Itanium, so it makes sense.

scriptproof 10y ago

They complained to be screwed by Google with Java, that is false, but at the same time are not afraid to screw HP. They had a contract to a long term support of Itanium and dropped it after one year to annoy HP (there were several trials between the two companies at this moment).

gogopuppygogo 10y ago
Actually makes me feel good to read that they are on the hook for this given how their customers were left in a lurch over this.

youdontknowtho 10y ago

OUCH. It's weird that companies that companies who compete so fiercely in the same markets really ever manage to work together. Once Oracle became a systems manufacturer HP had to know that they would boff them. From a technical perspective, the stuff that HP has in Nonstop, OpenVMS, and Super Dome are really impressive. I read that they sold OpenVMS to a third party that is busy porting to x64. Looking forward to running it in VM's for fun...because I have a weird sense of fun. Stop judging me.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
You heard right: https://vmssoftware.com/about_faq.html https://vmssoftware.com/about_faq.html

pinewurst 10y ago

Several years ago Oracle posted some very amusing HP internal documents about their Itanium efforts: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/itanium-346707.html http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/itanium-346707.h...

nigwil_ 10y ago
Thanks for the link. I tried to search for the trial exhibits but didn't find anything comprehensive. Any idea how we could see all the trial exhibits, as in both sides? thanks.

CodeSheikh 10y ago

Karma is a -----

sverige 10y ago

From the article: In a statement, Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley said the company had been providing all its latest software for Itanium servers since Kleinberg's decision. So does this mean they actually continued to work on it, but just told HP there was no market and had stopped work?

tw04 10y ago
It didn't matter at that point. Customers fled from Itanium in DROVES when Oracle made the announcement. By the time they quietly decided to keep releasing updates, the damage was done. It was an extremely effective tactic by Oracle to get customers to move away from HP... extremely dirty, but effective.

paulgerhardt 10y ago

Mentioned in the article but always amazing - Bryan Cantrill on Oracle killing Open Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc "Don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison"