5 ms·

That wasn't a mistake, and Itanium did just fine. Circa 2008 the fastest database servers in the world ran on Itanium.

by PeCaN 8y ago

_ph_ 8y ago
Indeed, and it would be interesting to see how the most recent Itanium would perform if it would be ported to the current 14nm process instead of 32nm. While it once was considered to be a monster chip in transistor count , it no longer is.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  Didn't Itanium suffer from the same issues as the Netburst architecture?
  - wmf 8y ago
    No, the issues were completely different. Itanium was pretty low-frequency.
pjmlp 8y ago
Intel was just unlucky that AMD exists and came out with AMD64. I believe if that wasn't the case, we would be using Itanium laptops nowadays.
- scruffyherder 8y ago
  I don't think they would have ever made Itanium mobile, instead we'd be stuck with that PAE nonsense, and living in 32bit world, because 'general users don't need 64bits' ...
  - wmf 8y ago
    I think Intel wanted to eventually phase out x86 and push Itanium all the way down the stack, not for technical reasons but because it was a proprietary architecture that would never have competing implementations.
    - FullyFunctional 8y ago
      You are think of Intel as having a single mind. The reality, and the reality of most large organizations, is that the ant hill is beaming with divergent and competing opinions. In particular, there were two powerful, competing camps: x86 and Itanium. The combined effect of Itanium performance not living up to promises [1] and AMD introducing a 64-bit x86 extension shifted the power balance, but it wasn't an inevitable outcome. [1] The first iteration (I have one in the garage) was ~ 486 level fast and, sure, the final iterations were fast, but that took an AWFUL lot of silicon. The perf/transistor is terrible, even worse than x86 (which is bad).
- protomyth 8y ago
  Maybe, but the Itanium came out during a time when the laptops were really becoming important and there was never an Itanium laptop. I look at the Itanium like I look at the G5 (970). It doomed itself by having no laptop possibilities.
  - beagle3 8y ago
    It mostly doomed itself by being a backward incompatible mess. You couldn't run your existing software on it, it was expensive, and slow; being in a laptop would not have mitigated any of these.
    - protomyth 8y ago
      Remembering the history, they had pretty much everyone signed up (including Sun for some reason) to convert their software. They were expensive, and like most manufactures they didn't have a good on ramp for hobbyists and early developers. I think if they had noticed the trend to laptops, the rest would have followed.
      - beagle3 8y ago
        Sun was in their blunder years at the time, also releasing x86 solaris and open sourcing it, so it's not surprising they signed up (I trust you when you say they did, I don't remember). HP signed up as part of the deal of killing their own processor division. Digital Alpha was somewhere between dying and dead/purchased by Intel. MIPS wasn't fairing very well already, especially with SGI committing slow long winded suicide by moving to Intel. Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don't find your argument convincing. ARM had a much better story even with early portables/laptops with Windows CE, and were a dismal failure -- just like the later Surface RT. ARM had a power/battery-life advantage for laptops and support from Microsoft, and that didn't help; Switching to Itanium would not even have that. If Itanium found any general market success, it would have only been because of Intel's dominance. Luckily for us, that didn't happen.
        8y ago

That wasn't a mistake, and Itanium did just fine. Circa 2008 the fastest database servers in the world ran on Itanium.

by PeCaN 8y ago

That wasn't a mistake, and Itanium did just fine. Circa 2008 the fastest database servers in the world ran on Itanium.

_ph_ 8y ago

Indeed, and it would be interesting to see how the most recent Itanium would perform if it would be ported to the current 14nm process instead of 32nm. While it once was considered to be a monster chip in transistor count , it no longer is.

cptskippy 8y ago
Didn't Itanium suffer from the same issues as the Netburst architecture?
- wmf 8y ago
  No, the issues were completely different. Itanium was pretty low-frequency.

pjmlp 8y ago

Intel was just unlucky that AMD exists and came out with AMD64. I believe if that wasn't the case, we would be using Itanium laptops nowadays.

scruffyherder 8y ago
I don't think they would have ever made Itanium mobile, instead we'd be stuck with that PAE nonsense, and living in 32bit world, because 'general users don't need 64bits' ...
- wmf 8y ago
  I think Intel wanted to eventually phase out x86 and push Itanium all the way down the stack, not for technical reasons but because it was a proprietary architecture that would never have competing implementations.
  - FullyFunctional 8y ago
    You are think of Intel as having a single mind. The reality, and the reality of most large organizations, is that the ant hill is beaming with divergent and competing opinions. In particular, there were two powerful, competing camps: x86 and Itanium. The combined effect of Itanium performance not living up to promises [1] and AMD introducing a 64-bit x86 extension shifted the power balance, but it wasn't an inevitable outcome. [1] The first iteration (I have one in the garage) was ~ 486 level fast and, sure, the final iterations were fast, but that took an AWFUL lot of silicon. The perf/transistor is terrible, even worse than x86 (which is bad).
protomyth 8y ago
Maybe, but the Itanium came out during a time when the laptops were really becoming important and there was never an Itanium laptop. I look at the Itanium like I look at the G5 (970). It doomed itself by having no laptop possibilities.
- beagle3 8y ago
  It mostly doomed itself by being a backward incompatible mess. You couldn't run your existing software on it, it was expensive, and slow; being in a laptop would not have mitigated any of these.
  - protomyth 8y ago
    Remembering the history, they had pretty much everyone signed up (including Sun for some reason) to convert their software. They were expensive, and like most manufactures they didn't have a good on ramp for hobbyists and early developers. I think if they had noticed the trend to laptops, the rest would have followed.
    - beagle3 8y ago
      Sun was in their blunder years at the time, also releasing x86 solaris and open sourcing it, so it's not surprising they signed up (I trust you when you say they did, I don't remember). HP signed up as part of the deal of killing their own processor division. Digital Alpha was somewhere between dying and dead/purchased by Intel. MIPS wasn't fairing very well already, especially with SGI committing slow long winded suicide by moving to Intel. Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don't find your argument convincing. ARM had a much better story even with early portables/laptops with Windows CE, and were a dismal failure -- just like the later Surface RT. ARM had a power/battery-life advantage for laptops and support from Microsoft, and that didn't help; Switching to Itanium would not even have that. If Itanium found any general market success, it would have only been because of Intel's dominance. Luckily for us, that didn't happen.
      - 8y ago