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> Potentially capable; their support for non-x86 has always fallen short. "Microsoft will continue to provide mainstream support for Itanium-based systems unti

> Potentially capable; their support for non-x86 has always fallen short. "Microsoft will continue to provide mainstream support for Itanium-based systems until July 2013, and extended support until July 2018." -- http://www.computerworld.com/article/2516742/computer-hardware/microsoft-ending-support-for-itanium.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2516742/computer-hardwa... Itanium came out in 2001 and the above article is from 2010, so that would be about 9 years of product releases and 17 years of support overall. And, frankly, there's no money to be made off of supporting all those miscellaneous architectures so Microsoft has no reason to bother.

rleigh 10y ago
I'm not referring to that type of support; this is merely support for the base platform. I'm referring to the entire ecosystem of Microsoft products, of which you'll find most are x86 only. When you say "there's no money to be made...so Micosoft has no reason to bother", this attitude is a major reason why ia64 failed, and why their previous arm attempt failed, and why their current arm attempt is also likely to fail. If the software isn't there, it's a poor proposition for most customers. When I run Linux on ia64 or arm, I have an entire distribution's worth of software at my fingertips, and for the most part I'm not losing out compared with more popular architectures. With Windows, no matter how technically good the base platform may be, the ecosystem is a wasteland and will remain so until Microsoft put the effort in to support them properly. Supporting multiple platforms is not expensive; it's simply a matter of having the build infrastructure in place. In Debian we had it build every package automatically built on 11 platforms. Microsoft could do the same for their applications. For example, see https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=okular&suite=sid https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=okular&suite=... -- one package built for 22 platforms. Building for three or four is not a lot to ask...
- RandomOpinion 10y ago
  > I'm not referring to that type of support; this is merely support for the base platform. I'm referring to the entire ecosystem of Microsoft products, of which you'll find most are x86 only. Windows Server comes with IIS and other services that would normally have been provided in a Linux environment by the Linux ecosystem. Also, as the article notes, SQL Server and Visual Studio were supported on Itanium as well. As Itanium only succeeded as a server product, there's no business reason for Microsoft to have ported their desktop applications to it.
  - rleigh 10y ago
    Those are just a select few products out of thousands of tools, applications and services I might need to run. The server vs desktop distinction isn't very important. What matters is the utility and hence viability of the platform as a whole. By not having the platform be generally usable, it greatly reduced its desirability and reach. Any considerations for such a server/desktop split certainly should not apply to arm, which can be used for either. Also, contrast with the experience of ia64 on Linux, where I had the full set of tools, services, applications available. That's the sort of experience Microsoft should have provided, but didn't. And should also be doing for arm, but aren't there either.
- throwawayish 10y ago
  IA64 failed because it was a bad answer to a question no one asked. AMD got it right, that's why AMD64 won.
  - rleigh 10y ago
    Yes, but none of this thread is about this specific platform and its merits, it's about the different strategies for supporting multiple platforms, and where Microsoft through the choices they made failed to realise their own full potential on non-x86 platforms while other organisations managed to fully support them.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    AMD managed to produce x64 thanks to the licenses they had from Intel, otherwise this laptop would be powered by an IA64 processor.
    - andreiw 10y ago
      No, it wouldn't. Sometimes I wonder if IA-64 was just an exercise in killing of Alpha and HP-PA... Anyway, x64 succeeded because instead of producing something no one asked for, and poorly (IA-64), AMD went to Microsoft, found out what they wanted from a 64-bit chip, and built that.
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        Sure it would. If Intel had transitioned their processor line to IA64, without AMD to defy their roadmap, do you really believe consumer desktops would magically start using other vendor processors? > AMD went to Microsoft, found out what they wanted from a 64-bit chip, and built that. Because they still had the cross-license deal with Intel that allowed them to legally build x86 clones. No x86 licenses, no x64.
        andreiw 10y ago
        We're talking complete hypotethicals. When x64 was introduced, not only weren't there any consumer Itanium chips, but they weren't even hypothetical.

rleigh 10y ago

I'm not referring to that type of support; this is merely support for the base platform. I'm referring to the entire ecosystem of Microsoft products, of which you'll find most are x86 only. When you say "there's no money to be made...so Micosoft has no reason to bother", this attitude is a major reason why ia64 failed, and why their previous arm attempt failed, and why their current arm attempt is also likely to fail. If the software isn't there, it's a poor proposition for most customers. When I run Linux on ia64 or arm, I have an entire distribution's worth of software at my fingertips, and for the most part I'm not losing out compared with more popular architectures. With Windows, no matter how technically good the base platform may be, the ecosystem is a wasteland and will remain so until Microsoft put the effort in to support them properly. Supporting multiple platforms is not expensive; it's simply a matter of having the build infrastructure in place. In Debian we had it build every package automatically built on 11 platforms. Microsoft could do the same for their applications. For example, see https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=okular&suite=sid https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=okular&suite=... -- one package built for 22 platforms. Building for three or four is not a lot to ask...

RandomOpinion 10y ago
> I'm not referring to that type of support; this is merely support for the base platform. I'm referring to the entire ecosystem of Microsoft products, of which you'll find most are x86 only. Windows Server comes with IIS and other services that would normally have been provided in a Linux environment by the Linux ecosystem. Also, as the article notes, SQL Server and Visual Studio were supported on Itanium as well. As Itanium only succeeded as a server product, there's no business reason for Microsoft to have ported their desktop applications to it.
- rleigh 10y ago
  Those are just a select few products out of thousands of tools, applications and services I might need to run. The server vs desktop distinction isn't very important. What matters is the utility and hence viability of the platform as a whole. By not having the platform be generally usable, it greatly reduced its desirability and reach. Any considerations for such a server/desktop split certainly should not apply to arm, which can be used for either. Also, contrast with the experience of ia64 on Linux, where I had the full set of tools, services, applications available. That's the sort of experience Microsoft should have provided, but didn't. And should also be doing for arm, but aren't there either.
throwawayish 10y ago
IA64 failed because it was a bad answer to a question no one asked. AMD got it right, that's why AMD64 won.
- rleigh 10y ago
  Yes, but none of this thread is about this specific platform and its merits, it's about the different strategies for supporting multiple platforms, and where Microsoft through the choices they made failed to realise their own full potential on non-x86 platforms while other organisations managed to fully support them.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  AMD managed to produce x64 thanks to the licenses they had from Intel, otherwise this laptop would be powered by an IA64 processor.
  - andreiw 10y ago
    No, it wouldn't. Sometimes I wonder if IA-64 was just an exercise in killing of Alpha and HP-PA... Anyway, x64 succeeded because instead of producing something no one asked for, and poorly (IA-64), AMD went to Microsoft, found out what they wanted from a 64-bit chip, and built that.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Sure it would. If Intel had transitioned their processor line to IA64, without AMD to defy their roadmap, do you really believe consumer desktops would magically start using other vendor processors? > AMD went to Microsoft, found out what they wanted from a 64-bit chip, and built that. Because they still had the cross-license deal with Intel that allowed them to legally build x86 clones. No x86 licenses, no x64.
      - andreiw 10y ago
        We're talking complete hypotethicals. When x64 was introduced, not only weren't there any consumer Itanium chips, but they weren't even hypothetical.