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This architecture accelerated Intel's downward spiral. It should have been shut down years ago, and I find it surprising in the changelog that Intel "is still o

This architecture accelerated Intel's downward spiral. It should have been shut down years ago, and I find it surprising in the changelog that Intel "is still officially shipping chips until July 29, 2021" no wonder Intel is behind on innovation. They should have closed out the team working on this long long ago and changed everyone working on this to making their newer chips work better.

ardy42 6y ago
> This architecture accelerated Intel's downward spiral. It should have been shut down years ago, and I find it surprising in the changelog that Intel "is still officially shipping chips until July 29, 2021" no wonder Intel is behind on innovation. I don't think so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4: > Launched November 20, 2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium: > Launched June 2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core: > Launched January 2006 You seem to be basically claiming their downward spiral started before their biggest recent upswing, which doesn't make sense. Itanium (and the Pentium 4) were mistakes that they managed to recover from 15 years ago. However, it's only just being discontinued because Intel's not a company that's willing and eager to leave their existing customers in a lurch. Edit: it sounds like HP was basically paying Intel to keep Itanium alive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium#HP_vs._Oracle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium#HP_vs._Oracle: > ...court documents unsealed by a Santa Clara County Court judge revealed that in 2008, Hewlett-Packard had paid Intel around $440 million to keep producing and updating Itanium microprocessors from 2009 to 2014. In 2010, the two companies signed another $250 million deal, which obliged Intel to continue making Itanium CPUs for HP's machines until 2017. According the the article, the latest Itatium processor was released in, surprise!, 2017.
mprovost 6y ago
When they say "still shipping" I imagine a box in a warehouse somewhere full of new old stock for enterprise customers with really long maintenance contracts. I'm sure nobody is actually working on the architecture anymore - I wonder when the last chip came off an assembly line.
- moonbug 6y ago
  more itaniums shipped as keyrings than socketed processors.
swalsh 6y ago
Intel is behind at the moment, but it's hardly in a downward spiral.
- bitwize 6y ago
  True before the M1. False now.
  - olliej 6y ago
    Don’t get me wrong, the M1 is clearly good, but remember AMD has had many years of being behind in both power and efficiency before getting to where it is now. I don’t see intel just rolling over, I suspect it will just take some years for them to get back to a good arch, just as it did when they had their long P4 period leading up to the Core series.
    - bitwize 6y ago
      AMD wasn't going against Apple in the performance silicon space when they were behind. In the coming years, any fab process innovation will see Apple buying up most or all of the fab capacity for the new process in the supply chain, locking other vendors out, meaning that in order to keep pace with Apple Silicon, Intel and AMD will have to build bigger, hotter, more power-hungry chips -- and then they're not really competing with Apple, just retreating into the enthusiast and high-end server hardware markets.
moonbug 6y ago
there's the small matter of these things called contractual obligations.
jcranmer 6y ago
If you were to ask most Intel employees about this announcement, the reaction you'd get would be "wait, we still make Itanium?" Whatever Itanium team is working on it still is clearly pretty small.

ardy42 6y ago

> This architecture accelerated Intel's downward spiral. It should have been shut down years ago, and I find it surprising in the changelog that Intel "is still officially shipping chips until July 29, 2021" no wonder Intel is behind on innovation. I don't think so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4: > Launched November 20, 2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium: > Launched June 2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core: > Launched January 2006 You seem to be basically claiming their downward spiral started before their biggest recent upswing, which doesn't make sense. Itanium (and the Pentium 4) were mistakes that they managed to recover from 15 years ago. However, it's only just being discontinued because Intel's not a company that's willing and eager to leave their existing customers in a lurch. Edit: it sounds like HP was basically paying Intel to keep Itanium alive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium#HP_vs._Oracle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium#HP_vs._Oracle: > ...court documents unsealed by a Santa Clara County Court judge revealed that in 2008, Hewlett-Packard had paid Intel around $440 million to keep producing and updating Itanium microprocessors from 2009 to 2014. In 2010, the two companies signed another $250 million deal, which obliged Intel to continue making Itanium CPUs for HP's machines until 2017. According the the article, the latest Itatium processor was released in, surprise!, 2017.

mprovost 6y ago

When they say "still shipping" I imagine a box in a warehouse somewhere full of new old stock for enterprise customers with really long maintenance contracts. I'm sure nobody is actually working on the architecture anymore - I wonder when the last chip came off an assembly line.

moonbug 6y ago
more itaniums shipped as keyrings than socketed processors.

swalsh 6y ago

Intel is behind at the moment, but it's hardly in a downward spiral.

bitwize 6y ago
True before the M1. False now.
- olliej 6y ago
  Don’t get me wrong, the M1 is clearly good, but remember AMD has had many years of being behind in both power and efficiency before getting to where it is now. I don’t see intel just rolling over, I suspect it will just take some years for them to get back to a good arch, just as it did when they had their long P4 period leading up to the Core series.
  - bitwize 6y ago
    AMD wasn't going against Apple in the performance silicon space when they were behind. In the coming years, any fab process innovation will see Apple buying up most or all of the fab capacity for the new process in the supply chain, locking other vendors out, meaning that in order to keep pace with Apple Silicon, Intel and AMD will have to build bigger, hotter, more power-hungry chips -- and then they're not really competing with Apple, just retreating into the enthusiast and high-end server hardware markets.

moonbug 6y ago

there's the small matter of these things called contractual obligations.

jcranmer 6y ago

If you were to ask most Intel employees about this announcement, the reaction you'd get would be "wait, we still make Itanium?" Whatever Itanium team is working on it still is clearly pretty small.