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Compatibility and ubiquity wins. As nearly always. I’m not particularly confused about Intel’s perspective on compatibility: Even at the time, there were seve

Compatibility and ubiquity wins. As nearly always. I’m not particularly confused about Intel’s perspective on compatibility: Even at the time, there were several examples of successful platform CPU transitions across architectural “full breaks”. Apple going from 68k to PowerPC is the closest analogy for Intel, and if the Itanium performance and software (compiler) story had played out as Intel envisioned they likely would have been fine. But as for ubiquity, I’m befuddled. As far as I’ve been able to determine—having lived through it and followed many retrospective threads like this looking for new evidence—Intel had no plans on any useful timeline to turn Itanium into a (non-workstation) desktop or laptop chip. Did they really think the market would stay bifurcated between “big iron” architectures and x86 personal machines for another decade? I can’t imagine they would have believed that.

flashback2199 3y ago
> Did they really think the market would stay bifurcated between “big iron” architectures and x86 personal machines for another decade? I can’t imagine they would have believed that. Oh but they did :)
bombcar 3y ago
I think it's the case that they wanted to believe that, because the other story, that all the major "big iron" companies would be absolutely and totally forever wrecked by stupid free Linux running on stupid cheap whiteboxes was simply too horrible to envision.
- twoodfin 3y ago
  Data center computing being dominated by commodity Linux running on commodity x86 PC architecture—for which the best CPUs were not commodities, but rather made exclusively by Intel—was likely the best of all possible worlds for them! Going back to at least the i432, Intel seems to have had a deep vein of “mainframe envy” in their culture and strategic thinking. It seems that somehow the market (and a bit of trailblazing into x86-64 by AMD) saved them from themselves.
  - watersb 3y ago
    > Going back to at least the i432, ... “mainframe envy” Direct quote from Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432 """ Intel's iAPX432 was intended to be Intel's major design for the 1980s. Unlike the 8086, which was designed the following year as a successor to the 8080, the iAPX 432 was a radical departure from Intel's previous designs meant for a different market niche... Referred to as a "micromainframe", the iAPX 432 was designed to be programmed entirely in high-level languages. """ Folklore describes the 8086 as a stop-gap design, an extension of the popular (but tiny) 8080 CPU. The "real" design project at Intel was the i432, which supported object-oriented programming and was THE FUTURE OF ALL COMPUTING. A cut-down version of the object oriented support was carried over into the x86 architecture, in its segmented memory model and page-description registers. You're welcome.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    It was great for Intel - but it wasn't great for certain big manufacturers (dinosaurs) that they were courting. I think they knew they could fall back on x86 if everything went wrong - but what they did NOT expect was x86-64 to just smash everything. That caught them on backfoot.
    - p_l 3y ago
      I remember the public roadmaps in tech magazines at the time, and Intel planned on keeping "consumer" market 32bit for longer time - then AMD dropped the Hammer ;>
initplus 3y ago
Same company that completely missed the boat on mobile not that many years later. Intel have consistently made serious mistakes in their strategic direction. Fumbling 64bit, turning Apple down on mobile, missing GPU/AI. They are basically just building a better version of the same product they were selling 20 years ago… so much opportunity missed here.
- chasil 3y ago
  You mean this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200
  - deaddodo 3y ago
    I think they're referring to the Core/Penryn series (the "direct" ancestor to modern Intel x86s). But even that goes back to the P6->P5->486->386->286->8086->8088->8080->8008->CTC lineage of 50+yrs. It literally just cuts out the few years of the abandoned NetBurst architecture.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> Did they really think the market would stay bifurcated between “big iron” architectures and x86 personal machines for another decade? I can’t imagine they would have believed that. I can. The x86 hegemony was overpowering in the PC space but the moment you left that corner of the market we had a lot more ISA diversity then than in the following years. In a world that seemed to have no problem with Macs on PowerPC, PCs on x86, and workstations/servers on SPARC/MIPS/PA-RISC, just consolidating workstations and servers probably seemed reasonable. You can even see an analog in the way we've kept x86 on "real computers" while ARM has dominated mobile. IMHO the only reason it didn't work out is because workstations and servers merged with PCs.

flashback2199 3y ago

bombcar 3y ago

I think it's the case that they wanted to believe that, because the other story, that all the major "big iron" companies would be absolutely and totally forever wrecked by stupid free Linux running on stupid cheap whiteboxes was simply too horrible to envision.

twoodfin 3y ago
Data center computing being dominated by commodity Linux running on commodity x86 PC architecture—for which the best CPUs were not commodities, but rather made exclusively by Intel—was likely the best of all possible worlds for them! Going back to at least the i432, Intel seems to have had a deep vein of “mainframe envy” in their culture and strategic thinking. It seems that somehow the market (and a bit of trailblazing into x86-64 by AMD) saved them from themselves.
- watersb 3y ago
  > Going back to at least the i432, ... “mainframe envy” Direct quote from Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432 """ Intel's iAPX432 was intended to be Intel's major design for the 1980s. Unlike the 8086, which was designed the following year as a successor to the 8080, the iAPX 432 was a radical departure from Intel's previous designs meant for a different market niche... Referred to as a "micromainframe", the iAPX 432 was designed to be programmed entirely in high-level languages. """ Folklore describes the 8086 as a stop-gap design, an extension of the popular (but tiny) 8080 CPU. The "real" design project at Intel was the i432, which supported object-oriented programming and was THE FUTURE OF ALL COMPUTING. A cut-down version of the object oriented support was carried over into the x86 architecture, in its segmented memory model and page-description registers. You're welcome.
- bombcar 3y ago
  It was great for Intel - but it wasn't great for certain big manufacturers (dinosaurs) that they were courting. I think they knew they could fall back on x86 if everything went wrong - but what they did NOT expect was x86-64 to just smash everything. That caught them on backfoot.
  - p_l 3y ago
    I remember the public roadmaps in tech magazines at the time, and Intel planned on keeping "consumer" market 32bit for longer time - then AMD dropped the Hammer ;>

initplus 3y ago

Same company that completely missed the boat on mobile not that many years later. Intel have consistently made serious mistakes in their strategic direction. Fumbling 64bit, turning Apple down on mobile, missing GPU/AI. They are basically just building a better version of the same product they were selling 20 years ago… so much opportunity missed here.

chasil 3y ago
You mean this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200
- deaddodo 3y ago
  I think they're referring to the Core/Penryn series (the "direct" ancestor to modern Intel x86s). But even that goes back to the P6->P5->486->386->286->8086->8088->8080->8008->CTC lineage of 50+yrs. It literally just cuts out the few years of the abandoned NetBurst architecture.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

> Did they really think the market would stay bifurcated between “big iron” architectures and x86 personal machines for another decade? I can’t imagine they would have believed that. I can. The x86 hegemony was overpowering in the PC space but the moment you left that corner of the market we had a lot more ISA diversity then than in the following years. In a world that seemed to have no problem with Macs on PowerPC, PCs on x86, and workstations/servers on SPARC/MIPS/PA-RISC, just consolidating workstations and servers probably seemed reasonable. You can even see an analog in the way we've kept x86 on "real computers" while ARM has dominated mobile. IMHO the only reason it didn't work out is because workstations and servers merged with PCs.