4 ms·
Yep. I'm very curious to know who actually use itanium cpus anymore. I've only seen it referenced in a couple of research papers that are from... 2015-2016? I e
by sneela 3y ago
Yep. I'm very curious to know who actually use itanium cpus anymore. I've only seen it referenced in a couple of research papers that are from... 2015-2016? I even went out of my way to see if a local refurbished electronics seller had itaniums many months ago and they said, "Itanium, huh. Haven't heard that name in a long time".
- aeyes 3y agoIn 2017 Intel released a new Itanium CPU so someone must have been using them.
- gsnedders 3y agoAFAIK they were contractually obliged to produce a new generation. However: > [The 2017 CPU] has no microarchitecture improvements over [the 2012 CPU]; despite nominally having a different stepping, it is functionally identical with the 9500 series, even having exactly the same bugs, the only difference being the 133 MHz higher frequency of 9760 and 9750 over 9560 and 9550 respectively. So they practically _didn't_.
- jacquesm 3y agoI wonder how many got sold or if it was just a run to fulfill that contract and nothing else.
- Kon-Peki 3y agoWe got 4 from that last batch that Intel ran. Our cloud migration project is way behind schedule and we needed the insurance. Support for the VMS version we’re running on them goes until 2028 I think. We’re decommissioning a couple of first-gen Itanium servers in the next few months. I think that the assumption is that we’d have to pay for disposal, so if someone wants them for Linux kernel support and can pick them up in Chicago, reply from an account with contact info and I’d send an email if it’s possible to give them away for free (I can ask).
- jacquesm 3y agoGreat attitude! You may have to destroy the harddrives for legal reasons. Or secure erase them but then you may as well pull them (still, that would save someone another parts hunt). If you go this route check out to see if there are still any old installation media and hardcopy docs that can go with them, that might be worth almost as much as the machines to the recipient.
- Kon-Peki 3y agoNotice that nobody replied ;) Anyway, VMS servers don’t generally have hard drives, they are designed to be run in a cluster, with each server using fiber channel to connect to a SAN. Also, I found that the ones we’re getting rid of aren’t first-gen - they’re 9300 series (3rd or 4th gen)
- jacquesm 3y agoYes, it's an expensive paperweight by the time you have it. But we can sex it it up a bit: probably the people who would love to have this system to run Linux on haven't figured out yet that there is GOLD on those circuit boards. Lots of it!! Free gold, just imagine... That should do it ;)
- rwmj 3y agoI wonder if they used a newer process. Presumably not since that would involve making new masks, raising the NRE costs massively.
- jabl 3y agoPer the table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium#Processors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium#Processors nope, both Poulson (2012) and Kittson (2017) used the same 32nm process.
- tyingq 3y agoWhatever remaining notable demand isn't directly for Itanium, but rather for legacy installations of HPUX and VMS. Where Itanium, despite the age, is still the most current platform.
- venatiodecorus 3y agoMy last employer ran custom COBOL applications on HP-UX. Last I knew they were working on a migration but they had custom rolled their entire system so it is going to take a while to migrate completely.
- chasil 3y agoGNU COBOL v3 is quite capable; they should evaluate it. Here is how I set it up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38276518#38282424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38276518#38282424