5 ms·

Do you remember Itanium?

by andromeduck 4y ago

klelatti 4y ago
I do and I'm giving them credit that they won't make the same mistakes again with a product that fails.
- andromeduck 4y ago
  But why not just jump and let momentum carry x86 like before? The problem with Itanium was largely that the ISA itself sucked to work with and SW/tools were not ready for prime time when 3p SW/HW vendors like Nvidia were expected to have ported to it. It doesn't seem like ARM and maybe RISC-V will have the same issues, at leatin terms of magnitude so I don't really see why it matters. I think long term they risk ending up like Canon/Nikon in the DSLR market when Sony came along with the new fangled mirrorless technology - sometimes you gotta disrupt yourself and skate to where the pick is going.
  - klelatti 4y ago
    Largely agree. I'd be astonished of they don't have high performance RISC-V designs under development. Problem is that the endpoint is much less attractive (for them) than where they are now and the transition will be very, very messy. At a time when the business is under strain for other reasons it's a risky move. Should have done it a few years ago - when they had process lead - but hindsight is a wonderful thing!
- xorcist 4y ago
  Mistake? They killed almost all their competition in one blow. Only IBM survived. Ruthless, yes. But mistake?
  - klelatti 4y ago
    You think Itanium was entirely successful? Really? Plus I think you've overlooked AMD if you think they killed off all the competition.
    - mepian 4y ago
      It was indeed successful at killing PA-RISC, high-end MIPS, and Alpha, because their owners (HP, SGI, Compaq) abandoned them for Itanium.
      - klelatti 4y ago
        You think Itanium was entirely successful then? My point is that it doesn't matter how good the architecture is or if a few firms follow you - you need it to be successful in the market. If you think Itanium was a cunning plan to take a few competitors out of the market only to abandon a few years later then we'll have to disagree.
        xorcist 4y ago
        Itanium was absolutely a plan to take out the competitors in the unix- and minicomputer market, where margins were much, much higher than in the generic x86 market. That worked. SGI, Digital, HP, Compaq/Tandem, they all fell. It was not necessarily the plan to abandon the architecture, but once it was won, it also wasn't terribly important to keep going. Much like most corporate takeovers to this day. Intel would have been happy to keep the market segmented for a few more years, but what happened instead was that the market vacuum was filled by Linux and x86 instead. That would likely have happened sooner or later anyway, but there you go.
        klelatti 4y ago
        Correlation is not causation.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Itanium only failed because AMD exists, with patent agreements that allowed them to create AMD64.
      - temac 4y ago
        It was a poor architecture though and if not by AMD64 it would have been killed by something else more in line with traditionnal high perf superscalar. Maybe even just Arm.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- panick21_ 4y ago
  I'm sure people said the same thing when they did Intel iAPX 432. Surely they are not doing that again. Well ...
  - klelatti 4y ago
    Indeed. I suspect the 'x86 always' mindset though led to the expensive failure in mobile - a huge miss. Easy to see this in hindsight though.
pjmlp 4y ago
Yes, it only failed because AMD came up with AMD64 thanks to their patent agreements. Had it not been the case, and everyone would be using Itanium no matter what.
- klelatti 4y ago
  > Had it not been the case, and everyone would be using Itanium no matter what. That's quite a strong statement.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    It is the hard reality, no AMD64, Itanium would have been the only 64 bit CPU successor for x86 coming out from Intel. Take it or leave it, and with Wintel going Itanium, that would be it.
    - klelatti 4y ago
      Today not 'everyone' is using x86 - by a long margin - so it's a bit of a stretch to say that in a hypothetical alternative history an architecture that failed in the market would be utterly dominant.
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        85% of desktop users and about 90% cloud users certainly are. Mobile phones and tablets are mostly consumer devices, Apple's ARM laptops are only relevant for about 10% of the desktop market. Outside embedded devices and electronic appliances, every other CPU is a rounding error in what concerns the general public.
        temac 4y ago
        If you exclude everything that does not go into your direction and make the hypothesis that a poor architecture would have risen and then would not have been replaced, you conclude that "everybody" would use it?

Do you remember Itanium?

klelatti 4y ago

I do and I'm giving them credit that they won't make the same mistakes again with a product that fails.

andromeduck 4y ago
But why not just jump and let momentum carry x86 like before? The problem with Itanium was largely that the ISA itself sucked to work with and SW/tools were not ready for prime time when 3p SW/HW vendors like Nvidia were expected to have ported to it. It doesn't seem like ARM and maybe RISC-V will have the same issues, at leatin terms of magnitude so I don't really see why it matters. I think long term they risk ending up like Canon/Nikon in the DSLR market when Sony came along with the new fangled mirrorless technology - sometimes you gotta disrupt yourself and skate to where the pick is going.
- klelatti 4y ago
  Largely agree. I'd be astonished of they don't have high performance RISC-V designs under development. Problem is that the endpoint is much less attractive (for them) than where they are now and the transition will be very, very messy. At a time when the business is under strain for other reasons it's a risky move. Should have done it a few years ago - when they had process lead - but hindsight is a wonderful thing!
xorcist 4y ago
Mistake? They killed almost all their competition in one blow. Only IBM survived. Ruthless, yes. But mistake?
- klelatti 4y ago
  You think Itanium was entirely successful? Really? Plus I think you've overlooked AMD if you think they killed off all the competition.
  - mepian 4y ago
    It was indeed successful at killing PA-RISC, high-end MIPS, and Alpha, because their owners (HP, SGI, Compaq) abandoned them for Itanium.
    - klelatti 4y ago
      You think Itanium was entirely successful then? My point is that it doesn't matter how good the architecture is or if a few firms follow you - you need it to be successful in the market. If you think Itanium was a cunning plan to take a few competitors out of the market only to abandon a few years later then we'll have to disagree.
      - xorcist 4y ago
        Itanium was absolutely a plan to take out the competitors in the unix- and minicomputer market, where margins were much, much higher than in the generic x86 market. That worked. SGI, Digital, HP, Compaq/Tandem, they all fell. It was not necessarily the plan to abandon the architecture, but once it was won, it also wasn't terribly important to keep going. Much like most corporate takeovers to this day. Intel would have been happy to keep the market segmented for a few more years, but what happened instead was that the market vacuum was filled by Linux and x86 instead. That would likely have happened sooner or later anyway, but there you go.
        klelatti 4y ago
        Correlation is not causation.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Itanium only failed because AMD exists, with patent agreements that allowed them to create AMD64.
    - temac 4y ago
      It was a poor architecture though and if not by AMD64 it would have been killed by something else more in line with traditionnal high perf superscalar. Maybe even just Arm.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
panick21_ 4y ago
I'm sure people said the same thing when they did Intel iAPX 432. Surely they are not doing that again. Well ...
- klelatti 4y ago
  Indeed. I suspect the 'x86 always' mindset though led to the expensive failure in mobile - a huge miss. Easy to see this in hindsight though.

pjmlp 4y ago

Yes, it only failed because AMD came up with AMD64 thanks to their patent agreements. Had it not been the case, and everyone would be using Itanium no matter what.

klelatti 4y ago
> Had it not been the case, and everyone would be using Itanium no matter what. That's quite a strong statement.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  It is the hard reality, no AMD64, Itanium would have been the only 64 bit CPU successor for x86 coming out from Intel. Take it or leave it, and with Wintel going Itanium, that would be it.
  - klelatti 4y ago
    Today not 'everyone' is using x86 - by a long margin - so it's a bit of a stretch to say that in a hypothetical alternative history an architecture that failed in the market would be utterly dominant.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      85% of desktop users and about 90% cloud users certainly are. Mobile phones and tablets are mostly consumer devices, Apple's ARM laptops are only relevant for about 10% of the desktop market. Outside embedded devices and electronic appliances, every other CPU is a rounding error in what concerns the general public.
      - temac 4y ago
        If you exclude everything that does not go into your direction and make the hypothesis that a poor architecture would have risen and then would not have been replaced, you conclude that "everybody" would use it?