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If itanium would have succeeded, what could the computing industry be like to day? What were the supposed advantages of itanium over x86?

by znpy 4y ago

flohofwoe 4y ago
> If itanium would have succeeded, what could the computing industry be like to day? Intel probably would have left the CPU market by now, and one of the promising workstation RISC ISAs of the 90's would have replaced x86 instead (like Alpha). > What were the supposed advantages of itanium over x86? Itanium went full in on VLIW (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_long_instruction_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_long_instruction_word), but that bet didn't work out in the real world.
- cubefox 4y ago
  The VLIW article sounds like VLIW is great. If so, the problem was not with VLIW, but with the fact that switching over to a complete new architecture is hard, and basically impossible when AMD at the same time creates pressure on the legacy front.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    VLIW has some annoying issues. The Mill proposed architecture is basically a tweak on VLIW, adding a number of features to make it easier to write software for and a variant of runtime scheduling that's quite simplified compared to OOO.
    - Qem 4y ago
      Any links to this Mill proposal?
      - zozbot234 4y ago
        Just google around. The basic idea dates as far back as Charles Babbage's work in the 19th century.
    - znpy 4y ago
      Mill computing? Did they ever ship anything? They pop up from time to time, i haven't heard their company name in a while, i wonder what they're up to as of today.
  - flohofwoe 4y ago
    The problem with VLIW was that it isn't a good fit for "general software" which has trouble to fill that many execution lanes with meaningful work. You can't just take existing source code like MS Word or Excel, compile it to a VLIW CPU, and expect it to do better than a traditional CISC or RISC design. It only works well for code written to solve specific "massively parallel" problems.
xbar 4y ago
Andy Grove thought it would produce higher margins as a product of bigger iron in monstrous client-server architectures. But just as the PC blew up the minicomputer market, x86 Linux servers and LAMP changed the game at the time Itanium uptake was supposed to explode. AMD64 made sure there was a path forward on x86, but the pre-dot-com-bust deployments were actually just fine in i686-32-bit memory space.

If itanium would have succeeded, what could the computing industry be like to day? What were the supposed advantages of itanium over x86?

by znpy 4y ago

If itanium would have succeeded, what could the computing industry be like to day? What were the supposed advantages of itanium over x86?

flohofwoe 4y ago

> If itanium would have succeeded, what could the computing industry be like to day? Intel probably would have left the CPU market by now, and one of the promising workstation RISC ISAs of the 90's would have replaced x86 instead (like Alpha). > What were the supposed advantages of itanium over x86? Itanium went full in on VLIW (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_long_instruction_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_long_instruction_word), but that bet didn't work out in the real world.

cubefox 4y ago
The VLIW article sounds like VLIW is great. If so, the problem was not with VLIW, but with the fact that switching over to a complete new architecture is hard, and basically impossible when AMD at the same time creates pressure on the legacy front.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  VLIW has some annoying issues. The Mill proposed architecture is basically a tweak on VLIW, adding a number of features to make it easier to write software for and a variant of runtime scheduling that's quite simplified compared to OOO.
  - Qem 4y ago
    Any links to this Mill proposal?
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      Just google around. The basic idea dates as far back as Charles Babbage's work in the 19th century.
  - znpy 4y ago
    Mill computing? Did they ever ship anything? They pop up from time to time, i haven't heard their company name in a while, i wonder what they're up to as of today.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  The problem with VLIW was that it isn't a good fit for "general software" which has trouble to fill that many execution lanes with meaningful work. You can't just take existing source code like MS Word or Excel, compile it to a VLIW CPU, and expect it to do better than a traditional CISC or RISC design. It only works well for code written to solve specific "massively parallel" problems.

xbar 4y ago

Andy Grove thought it would produce higher margins as a product of bigger iron in monstrous client-server architectures. But just as the PC blew up the minicomputer market, x86 Linux servers and LAMP changed the game at the time Itanium uptake was supposed to explode. AMD64 made sure there was a path forward on x86, but the pre-dot-com-bust deployments were actually just fine in i686-32-bit memory space.