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I don't think x86 compatibility mattered. When it launched in 2001 it was supposed to replace HP's PA-RISC architecture which is totally different anyway. Sun

I don't think x86 compatibility mattered. When it launched in 2001 it was supposed to replace HP's PA-RISC architecture which is totally different anyway. Sun and its SPARC processors were very much alive, Google was only three years old, and AWS was five years away - the idea that a massive array of cheap x86 processors will outperform enterprise-class servers simply hadn't occurred to most people yet. Of course, the joke is that cheap x86 processors did outperform Itanium (and every other architectures, eventually).

xscott 7y ago
> I don't think x86 compatibility mattered. I'll admit I had a limited worldview, but not running Excel as quickly seemed like the kind of criticisms I saw in the trade rags at the time. > the idea that a massive array of cheap x86 processors will outperform enterprise-class servers simply hadn't occurred to most people yet Oh, I don't know. There was a really common Slashdot cliche running around at that time: "Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?"
- kragen 7y ago
  Yeah, it had clearly occurred to everyone on Slashdot. On the other hand, we liked to "imagine Beowulf clusters" of all kinds of recondite hardware. Elbrus 2000 is real power! HOT GRITS!
  - bloopernova 7y ago
    /. was another world, one that I miss sometimes. I'm probably viewing it through rose-tinted nostalgia, but I don't remember the vitriol and hatred that so many social sites are soaked in these days. The Mozilla open source announcement, the Microsoft anti-trust case, Linux exploding in popularity, it all felt like we were changing the world for the better.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      /. was great... and then it wasn't. The troll population went way up, the "first post" thing was just noise, and eventually I just quit going there. HN is also less than it used to be, but I think that the mods have kept it better than /. became - so far, at least.
kragen 7y ago
> When it launched in 2001...the idea that a massive array of cheap x86 processors will outperform enterprise-class servers simply hadn't occurred to most people yet When do you mean? In 2001? It occurred to Yahoo, whose site had been run that way since almost the beginning, on FreeBSD. It occurred to Google, whose site was run that way since the beginning. It occurred to anyone who was watching the Top500 list, which was already crawling with Beowulfs — admittedly, not at the top of the list yet. It should have occurred to Intel, who were presumably the ones selling those servers to Yahoo and Penguin Computing and VA Research (who had IPOed in 1999 under the symbol LNUX). It had occurred to Intergraph, who had switched from their own high-performance graphics chips to Intel's by 1998. It had occurred to Jim Clark, who had jumped off the sinking MIPS ship at SGI. In 1994. It occurred to the rest of SGI by 1998, when they launched the SGI Visual Workstation, then announced they were going to give up on MIPS and board the Itanic. I mean, yes, it hadn't occurred to most people yet. Because most people are stupid, and most of the ones who weren't stupid weren't paying attention. But it hadn't occurred to most people at Intel? You'd think they'd have a pretty good handle on how much ass they were already kicking. > the joke is that cheap x86 processors did outperform Itanium (and every other architectures, eventually). Even on my Intel laptop, more of the computrons come from the Intel integrated GPU. In machines with ATI (cough) and NVIDIA cards, it's no contest; the GPU is an order of magnitude beefier.
- scholia 7y ago
  > When it launched in 2001...the idea that a massive array of cheap x86 processors will outperform enterprise-class servers simply hadn't occurred to most people yet The idea was certainly around in the early-to-mid 1980s, when some former Intel engineers founded Sequent. The Balance 8000, released in 1984, supported up to 12 processors on dual-CPU boards, while the Balance 21000, released in 1986, supported up to 30. I interviewed the founder, Casey Powell, and he was explicit about multiple Intel microprocessors replacing large systems. He was targeting minicomputers at the time, of course, but we all anticipated that bigger sets of more powerful CPUs would eventually surpass even the biggest "big iron". Powell was a great guy. However, his company got taken over by IBM. In the end, he didn't get to change the world. "It's hard to be the little guy on the block and have really great technology and get beaten, just because the other guy is big." https://www.cnet.com/news/sequent-was-overmatched-ceo-says/ https://www.cnet.com/news/sequent-was-overmatched-ceo-says/
rbanffy 7y ago
> I don't think x86 compatibility mattered. It did. At that time Linux and open source were not the clear winners in the server space they are now and people were not used (or able) to recompile their code. Windows took a long time to support Itanium and companies wouldn't buy it because they had nothing to run on those machines. They got x86 machines instead and amd64 when it became available.

xscott 7y ago

> I don't think x86 compatibility mattered. I'll admit I had a limited worldview, but not running Excel as quickly seemed like the kind of criticisms I saw in the trade rags at the time. > the idea that a massive array of cheap x86 processors will outperform enterprise-class servers simply hadn't occurred to most people yet Oh, I don't know. There was a really common Slashdot cliche running around at that time: "Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?"

kragen 7y ago
Yeah, it had clearly occurred to everyone on Slashdot. On the other hand, we liked to "imagine Beowulf clusters" of all kinds of recondite hardware. Elbrus 2000 is real power! HOT GRITS!
- bloopernova 7y ago
  /. was another world, one that I miss sometimes. I'm probably viewing it through rose-tinted nostalgia, but I don't remember the vitriol and hatred that so many social sites are soaked in these days. The Mozilla open source announcement, the Microsoft anti-trust case, Linux exploding in popularity, it all felt like we were changing the world for the better.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    /. was great... and then it wasn't. The troll population went way up, the "first post" thing was just noise, and eventually I just quit going there. HN is also less than it used to be, but I think that the mods have kept it better than /. became - so far, at least.

kragen 7y ago

> When it launched in 2001...the idea that a massive array of cheap x86 processors will outperform enterprise-class servers simply hadn't occurred to most people yet When do you mean? In 2001? It occurred to Yahoo, whose site had been run that way since almost the beginning, on FreeBSD. It occurred to Google, whose site was run that way since the beginning. It occurred to anyone who was watching the Top500 list, which was already crawling with Beowulfs — admittedly, not at the top of the list yet. It should have occurred to Intel, who were presumably the ones selling those servers to Yahoo and Penguin Computing and VA Research (who had IPOed in 1999 under the symbol LNUX). It had occurred to Intergraph, who had switched from their own high-performance graphics chips to Intel's by 1998. It had occurred to Jim Clark, who had jumped off the sinking MIPS ship at SGI. In 1994. It occurred to the rest of SGI by 1998, when they launched the SGI Visual Workstation, then announced they were going to give up on MIPS and board the Itanic. I mean, yes, it hadn't occurred to most people yet. Because most people are stupid, and most of the ones who weren't stupid weren't paying attention. But it hadn't occurred to most people at Intel? You'd think they'd have a pretty good handle on how much ass they were already kicking. > the joke is that cheap x86 processors did outperform Itanium (and every other architectures, eventually). Even on my Intel laptop, more of the computrons come from the Intel integrated GPU. In machines with ATI (cough) and NVIDIA cards, it's no contest; the GPU is an order of magnitude beefier.

scholia 7y ago
> When it launched in 2001...the idea that a massive array of cheap x86 processors will outperform enterprise-class servers simply hadn't occurred to most people yet The idea was certainly around in the early-to-mid 1980s, when some former Intel engineers founded Sequent. The Balance 8000, released in 1984, supported up to 12 processors on dual-CPU boards, while the Balance 21000, released in 1986, supported up to 30. I interviewed the founder, Casey Powell, and he was explicit about multiple Intel microprocessors replacing large systems. He was targeting minicomputers at the time, of course, but we all anticipated that bigger sets of more powerful CPUs would eventually surpass even the biggest "big iron". Powell was a great guy. However, his company got taken over by IBM. In the end, he didn't get to change the world. "It's hard to be the little guy on the block and have really great technology and get beaten, just because the other guy is big." https://www.cnet.com/news/sequent-was-overmatched-ceo-says/ https://www.cnet.com/news/sequent-was-overmatched-ceo-says/

rbanffy 7y ago

> I don't think x86 compatibility mattered. It did. At that time Linux and open source were not the clear winners in the server space they are now and people were not used (or able) to recompile their code. Windows took a long time to support Itanium and companies wouldn't buy it because they had nothing to run on those machines. They got x86 machines instead and amd64 when it became available.