4 ms·
About the only real "success" of Itanium was wiping out the competing architectures. ARM only survived because its low power consumption was perfect for mobile
by flyinghamster 3y ago
About the only real "success" of Itanium was wiping out the competing architectures. ARM only survived because its low power consumption was perfect for mobile and embedded use. Once Acorn was gone, we didn't see a mainstream ARM-based personal computer again until the M1 Mac.
- jabl 3y ago> About the only real "success" of Itanium was wiping out the competing architectures. Arguably x86-64 would have wiped those out anyway, with or without Itanium.
- unregistereddev 3y agoMost likely, yes. But without Itanium, the competing architectures would have had several more years of development before x86-64 was released. While the end result would probably be similar, it is interesting to think about what improvements may have been made in competing architectures in those interim years.
- acdha 3y agoYeah, the big question I have is whether PowerPC or maybe Alpha would have done better. Both had competitive chips but a lot of companies were waiting for Itanium since the analysts were saying that was the future. PPC survived for a while on Macs but it’s interesting to consider hope many extra millions shipped per year it would have taken to make it a profitable and more competitive business. Microsoft had NT running on the hardware so a switch could have been relatively quick.