4 ms·
> 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 Itani
by 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.