5 ms·

"We need more time to fix the problems" seems a bit late. Itanium is not a new architecture. From a previous thread:[1] > And with the already severely limite

by arp242 3y ago

"We need more time to fix the problems" seems a bit late. Itanium is not a new architecture. From a previous thread:[1] > And with the already severely limited choice of current architectures for the masses (x86, arm), it becomes even more important to keep what we have or had in the past, to not end in a 'If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.' type of future. Which seems like a rather odd argument, considering Linux supports 18 other architectures, and IA-64 was about as far removed "from the masses" as possible and only ever available in "Call To Get a Quote"-priced server hardware. I can't see a single good reason to keep it alive: there is extremely limited hobby interest ("a guy in Germany who wants to keep support for ideological reasons and can't even afford the energy costs of turning the servers on too often" is a very weak signal), and commercial production interest is probably close to zero – if not exactly zero: most Itanium server are running HP-UX or VMS, and if you're running Linux you probably don't want to upgrade because it sees so little testing (6.1 is supported until the 2030s!) [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/all/59a76177-8ed4-e71e-9b11-a673298b5b4b@web.de/ https://lore.kernel.org/all/59a76177-8ed4-e71e-9b11-a673298b...

codeflo 3y ago
Also, if there is commercial interest for Linux on IA-64, someone should be able to pay someone to maintain kernel support and perform extensive tests. The fact that this hasn't yet happened yet is at least potentially a signal.
- TheCondor 3y ago
  Say there is commercial interest… it’s all custom work. Having support in the mainline kernel is a fairly small piece of the equation, there aren’t active distributions that support it. At best you’d be putting a newer kernel on an ancient distribution, worse you’d be building a hand made distribution. If they are supporting some old Linux, I think it would be best to patch that kernel if there are flaws or fixes. If there are newer features they are attempting to add, I assert that you probably want more than the kernel like the C library.. maybe a lot more pieces. it’s not easy and it’s a pain but an out of line kernel patch doesn’t seem that bad, whether or not the support is mainlined seems pretty small compared to maintaining the tooling chain and everything else. The support and “new features” is pretty limited too, usb-c isn’t coming, thunderbolt isn’t coming, no advanced power management is coming.
  - samus 3y ago
    The new scheduler, memory folio conversions, file systems, and other improvements and cleanups are also not coming.
chasil 3y ago
From this perspective, SPARC is almost equally exotic as Itanium, and provides sufficient architectural diversity in the unlikely case that it is needed in the future. SPARC also actually had market success, which cannot be said for Itanium.
- kaashif 3y ago
  Also you can buy a SPARC server for very cheap on eBay, less than a hundred bucks in many cases. Shipping is usually more expensive than the item itself. There are thousands or more of those things out there.
  - chasil 3y ago
    Oracle also offers free SPARC cores from the former "Niagra" line. The T2 has vastly better FPU performance than the T1. https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t2-page.html https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t2-pag... https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t1-page.html https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t1-pag... It is doubtful that Intel would ever consider doing such a thing with Itanium.
  - meepmorp 3y ago
    You can buy new SPARC servers from Fujitsu: https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/servers/unix/sparc/ https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/servers/un... I believe they develop their own chip designs.
    - sillywalk 3y ago
      I'm not sure if they're "new". It looks like those servers use the SPARC64 XII, from 2017-18 "Fujitsu is going to continue Fujitsu SPARC M12 server sales until fiscal 2029 and support services until fiscal 2034." [0] [0] https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/servers/unix/sparc/key-reports/roadmap/ https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/servers/un...
imtringued 3y ago
Is this some kind of joke? Why waste time on Itanium support when RISC-V will result in the end of the ISA wars? Sure you might argue that in the future there will be an even better ISA, but nothing prevents those future processors to simply support RISC-V for legacy applications.
- WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
  > when RISC-V will result in the end of the ISA wars Oh sweet summer child…
  - messe 3y ago
    Reminds me of Linus Torvalds’ quote from 1992: > Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5.
- RetroTechie 3y ago
  https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

by arp242 3y ago

codeflo 3y ago

Also, if there is commercial interest for Linux on IA-64, someone should be able to pay someone to maintain kernel support and perform extensive tests. The fact that this hasn't yet happened yet is at least potentially a signal.

TheCondor 3y ago
Say there is commercial interest… it’s all custom work. Having support in the mainline kernel is a fairly small piece of the equation, there aren’t active distributions that support it. At best you’d be putting a newer kernel on an ancient distribution, worse you’d be building a hand made distribution. If they are supporting some old Linux, I think it would be best to patch that kernel if there are flaws or fixes. If there are newer features they are attempting to add, I assert that you probably want more than the kernel like the C library.. maybe a lot more pieces. it’s not easy and it’s a pain but an out of line kernel patch doesn’t seem that bad, whether or not the support is mainlined seems pretty small compared to maintaining the tooling chain and everything else. The support and “new features” is pretty limited too, usb-c isn’t coming, thunderbolt isn’t coming, no advanced power management is coming.
- samus 3y ago
  The new scheduler, memory folio conversions, file systems, and other improvements and cleanups are also not coming.

chasil 3y ago

From this perspective, SPARC is almost equally exotic as Itanium, and provides sufficient architectural diversity in the unlikely case that it is needed in the future. SPARC also actually had market success, which cannot be said for Itanium.

kaashif 3y ago
Also you can buy a SPARC server for very cheap on eBay, less than a hundred bucks in many cases. Shipping is usually more expensive than the item itself. There are thousands or more of those things out there.
- chasil 3y ago
  Oracle also offers free SPARC cores from the former "Niagra" line. The T2 has vastly better FPU performance than the T1. https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t2-page.html https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t2-pag... https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t1-page.html https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t1-pag... It is doubtful that Intel would ever consider doing such a thing with Itanium.
- meepmorp 3y ago
  You can buy new SPARC servers from Fujitsu: https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/servers/unix/sparc/ https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/servers/un... I believe they develop their own chip designs.
  - sillywalk 3y ago
    I'm not sure if they're "new". It looks like those servers use the SPARC64 XII, from 2017-18 "Fujitsu is going to continue Fujitsu SPARC M12 server sales until fiscal 2029 and support services until fiscal 2034." [0] [0] https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/servers/unix/sparc/key-reports/roadmap/ https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/servers/un...

imtringued 3y ago

Is this some kind of joke? Why waste time on Itanium support when RISC-V will result in the end of the ISA wars? Sure you might argue that in the future there will be an even better ISA, but nothing prevents those future processors to simply support RISC-V for legacy applications.

WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
> when RISC-V will result in the end of the ISA wars Oh sweet summer child…
- messe 3y ago
  Reminds me of Linus Torvalds’ quote from 1992: > Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5.
RetroTechie 3y ago
https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/