Microsoft slowly backs away from Itanium

i saw this remark about ms itanium support that i found interesting.:

<A HREF="http://www.ptc.com/partners/hardware/current/itanium_letter.htm" target="_new">http://www.ptc.com/partners/hardware/current/itanium_letter.htm</A>

it does seem ms is dropping some support for itanium now and maybe more later if xeon takes off more

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Funny - I couldn't even find the word Microsoft on that web page.

Reply to sonoran

False info, you are misreading the point of the announcemment of PTC

Xeon will have 64 bit enhancements somewhat similar to the A64. They plan to go with Xeon it seems as it will hit more customers than the I2.

My sig is better than yours.

Reply to FUGGER

hmm true, i wonder why i kept thinking ms lol, sorry about that.

but it still shows now that intel is making the move to integrate itanium and xeon to the same platform, that developers are leaning more towards the xeon 64bit architecture.

Reply to trooper11

well as pointed out, this is not about MS pulling the plug, but PTC.

That still doesn't send a good message though, since Pro engineer and other PTC apps *have* been ported to IA64 (I wonder, using intel IPF development funds ?), and yet they are pulling support for it, effective *immediately* even though there is no 64 bit x86 replacement yet. That clearly shows Pro/E IA64 sales where close to zero, and PTC was not expecting it to pick up in any significant way. So much for IPF and the workstation market.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Reply to P4Man

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. And in this case, why water it with Perrier when tap water will do?

<pre>"Build a man a fire and he's warm for the rest of the evening.
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life." - Steve Taylor</pre>

Reply to slvr_phoenix

In graphic Application it too hard for itanium to compete as it use much less mature graphic driver.Even XP 64 see a large decrease in game due to driver even if is X86 for X86.For nvidia it got more sense to back up AMD 64 that IA64 in any case itanium sale are growing fast and it will enter mainframe soon.

i need to change useur name.

Reply to juin

Intel can't make a profit with Itanium being restrained to the high end server market they need bigger volumes. Workstation market is an obvious candidate, especially since it tends to love FP performance and more often than not, requires 64 bit. If intel can't crack this one, it doesn't bode well at all.

As for fast "growing sales".. 100% increase over a half dozen is still only a dozen. After almost 5 years, its sales are still almost insignificant. That is not quite impressive for a platform that was poised to replace pretty much the entire risc market, and for which PA Risc, Alpha and Mips where sacrified.

And mainframe ? LOL, I had not yet heard IBM was porting z/OS to it. Maybe you meant the Tandem/Nonstop market.. thats great, that may sell another tray or two of chips per year, I'm sure that will make intel rich. And yes, I know how much such systems and their support cost, but that only helps HP/IBM/Unisys/Bull/.., not intel which only gets a tiny fraction of that revenue. A few thousand dollars per chip in a market that sells maybe a few hundred systems per year... that is not even pocket change.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Reply to P4Man

Itanium does not have to make a profit, its future is already set and it has little to do with consumers. You are missing the bigger picture.

Goverment, medical, and space applications alone ensure the I2 growth. Three segments you are completely obivious too. You are limited to what you read here it seems.

I2 is not aimed at the consumers or small business like the Xeon is, the Xeon will hit more customers for PTC and it was a good business choice to move to that platform and not the A64 platform.

My sig is better than yours.

Reply to FUGGER

>Itanium does not have to make a profit, its future is
>already set and it has little to do with consumers. You are
>missing the bigger picture.

Oh no, I'm not. Of course Itanium should pay for it selve, or it will be scrapped. Intel currently pays around $4-$500M for ongoing R&D in cpu development, compilers and chipsets while last year, it got some $100-150M in revenue. That is a $350M loss on top of an initial investment of a ~$5B. You really think intel's shareholders will let intel continue throwing away their money if it doesnt offer a promise of future profitability ? You think they aren't pissed off enough yet that those billions are likely to be completely unrecoverable now Itaniums future is most likely limited to the high end, low volume niche markets it is currently competing in ?

>Goverment, medical, and space applications alone ensure the
>I2 growth

Growth is such a meaningless term at its current peanut shipment levels. It needs volume, those $500M recurring costs need to be paid for somehow, and selling thousand chips per year in the tandem/nonstop/vms market is NOT going to make that happen and the fact those systems may represent a billion dollar market is no help for intel.

>Goverment, medical, and space applications alone ensure the
>I2 growth. Three segments you are completely obivious too.
>You are limited to what you read here it seems.

Completely irrelevant. You are probably confusing system sales and associated revenue with intels cpu sales. Sure, HP, SGI, Bull, etc could make a nice buck selling only a handfull of high end IPF machines in such markets, much like they do or did with PA Risc systems, MIPS, etc, but the percentage of that revenue that intel captures on for instance a 64 cpu Altix system and support contracts, is marginal. Maybe 3%. You think IPF is a charity program of intel for its oems ?

>I2 is not aimed at the consumers or small business like the
>Xeon is

No kidding einstein, that is not the point. But intel needs to find markets that will allow it sell at least 500k or a 1m chips per year, depending on ASP's, or IPF will just bleed more money; "Goverment, medical, and space applications" just do not offer such volumes, where the technical workstation market would be a better bet already. Why is it you think IBM is pushing Power chips into Macintoshes and even into consoles these days ? And consider IBM, unlike intel, can absorb its losses on Power development since these costs allow it to sell high revenuee high margin systems. intel can't it only makes money selling the chips.

Its very simple: HP dumped PA Risc development because it was getting too expensive, in spite of the fact PA Risc chips are what enabled it to sell billions of lucrative high end gear, software and service contracts. So they made a deal with Intel which took over the cost, and designed IPF which was poised both to replace PA Risc and Alpha as well as become a high volume, industry standard product over time. Thats the only way such a deal makes sense. As it is, it looks like IPF will basically replace PARisc and alpha, and nothing else, so HP managed to outsource that development at almost no cost. I'm sure some people at HP are laughing their asses off right now.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Reply to P4Man

Quote :

You really think Intel’s shareholders will let Intel continue throwing away their money if it doesn’t offer a promise of future profitability?

For the last 35+ years Intel has promised future profitably from technologies. You really think the investors didn’t see the Willy? Intel has something AMD does not Investor trust. Never in the history of Intel has their investors tried to sue them *cough* AMD.

Quote :

Growth is such a meaningless term at its current peanut shipment levels.

So the purchase of the I2's for the FBI's carnivore project, I2's for NASA's Mars landing simulations, I2's for the Pentagons missile defense programs and nuclear weapon simulations or perhaps the future stealth air superiority fighter the raptor, I2's for Wall Street, or I2's for the human genome project, or maybe NVIDIA’s drivers churning systems that run on I2's and A64's?

Where does the scope begin and you’re European short sightedness end?

Quote :

Its very simple: HP dumped PA Risc development because it was getting too expensive,

Sorry Itanium development was well underway the technologies from the alpha team were purchased by Intel and everything there in.

See with you it’s quite obvious that you’re short sited. Over the last 5 years Intel has been consuming companies that make competitive technologies to the Itanium line, most of which are patents that incur possible "sharing". If Intel wasn’t planning for the future they would have dropped the technologies quite quickly, yet they continue purchasing companies up, like Elbrus and UniPro for instance.

Quote :

I'm sure some people at HP are laughing their asses off right now.

If they are they should be fired, disobedience in the workplace is unacceptable.

Xeon

Scratch Here To Reveal Prize
In the case of over scratching contact THG for property damage claims.

Reply to Xeon

>You really think the investors didn’t see the Willy?

Willy made intel a bunch of money, it wasn't an unrecoverable cost of a few billion dollar.

> Never in the history of Intel has their investors tried to
>sue them

They don't have to sue them for pressuring the intel board. Intel is owned by its shareholders, they have the last word, period.

>So the purchase of the I2's for the FBI's carnivore
>project, I2's for NASA's Mars landing simulations, <snip> >blah blah

That's a great list. very impressive (aside from the human genome project where intel actually donated the chips) and I'm sure you could make a looong list. To the point where you have listed each and every sale that contributed to intels 100k units shipped last year. It doesnt matter wether those chips are used to power game consoles, pornowebsites or space stations, what matters is how many they sell, and at what price. So far, they sell peanuts. ($150M in revenue, is peanuts for a company like intel, and is peanuts compared to the costs of developping the chip).

>Sorry Itanium development was well underway the
>technologies from the alpha team were purchased by Intel
>and everything there in.

So what are you saying ? HP dumped PA Risc development, because they found it too expensive. Are you denying that or contradicting that somehow ?

>See with you it’s quite obvious that you’re short sighted

No I'm not. Its quite simple really, the market Itanium currently competes in, just doesn't offer the volume required to pay the R&D bills if you're only generating revenue from the cpu's like Intel, and unlike anyone else. Seriously, if HP saw no financial reason to continue developping its own high end CPU's which enable it sell a few billion worth of servers, HP-UX licences, software, consultancy, support contracts,.., you seriously think intel could make money selling just the chips if it can not outgrow the PA Risc market *significantly* ?

intel would need around 50% of the high end unix and HPC market if it wanted to just break even on its investments, it simply doesnt make economic sense at their current 5% or so. Especially when you consider the market this market is shrinking year after year after year.

Anyone with a clue understands IPF made sense for both Intel and HP only if it could leverage the investment by selling those chips in a much bigger market than just PA Risc superdomes and Altix servers. IPF only made financial sense to intel as a long term replacement of x86 when and where 64 bit support was required. With the arrival of EM64T, IPF's chances of ever achieving that, are getting close to zero.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Reply to P4Man

Quote :

Willy made Intel a bunch of money, it wasn't an unrecoverable cost of a few billion dollar.

No but you missed the point, the promise to make money on either core was the same. But from a technology acceptance point IA-64 is too new people don’t want to leave behind everything that’s built around IA-32, remember Intel is aware of this.

For the long term I see the IA-64 technology evolving significantly better than IA-32 IPC cap and clock speeds vs. micron size leakage, yada yada.

Intel has taken this into account and rest assured they will have the final say in IA selection for mainstream users.

Quote :

They don't have to sue them for pressuring the Intel board. Intel is owned by its shareholders, they have the last word, period.

As is every other public company here in North America what’s your point? Perhaps coining the idea that the Board has controlling shares in the company? Which is impossible with people as rich as Bill Gates popping up all over.

Quote :

That's a great list. very impressive (aside from the human genome project where intel actually donated the chips) and I'm sure you could make a looong list. To the point where you have listed each and every sale that contributed to intels 100k units shipped last year. It doesnt matter wether those chips are used to power game consoles, pornowebsites or space stations, what matters is how many they sell, and at what price. So far, they sell peanuts. ($150M in revenue, is peanuts for a company like intel, and is peanuts compared to the costs of developping the chip).

You again missed the point, the technology is gaining acceptance. Where it lands people notice that’s the kind of effect that they are looking for, it spurs talk about power, speed, resources the whole nine yards. When you convince the Top 100 companies in the world with a product priced and designed for them don’t think fortune won’t write about it.

Once the movers and shakers get on the industries gaming/SOHO software/Specialized computing ect. Will build software to meet the new immerging technologies.

Quote :

So what are you saying ?

No HP saw they were outgunned with Intel’s solution.

Quote :

No I'm not.

Yes you are, and we will discuss this later.

Quote :

Its quite simple really, the market Itanium currently competes in, just doesn't offer the volume required to pay the R&D bills if you're only generating revenue from the cpu's like Intel, and unlike anyone else.

It doesn’t need to it’s the market penetration they are looking at. When something is damned good don’t think people won’t talk about it.

Quote :

Seriously, if HP saw no financial reason to continue developping its own high end CPU's which enable it sell a few billion worth of servers, HP-UX licences, software, consultancy, support contracts,.., you seriously think intel could make money selling just the chips if it can not outgrow the PA Risc market *significantly* ?

Lack of foresight as always they want the technology to come out of the gates unchallenged. No patent infringements, good compilers, strong chipset support, strong OEM support. Add that all up and when Intel brings IA64 to a desktop solution there won’t be competition for 64bit 100% support home user solutions.

Quote :

50%

Note even close enough people that buy that type of hardware don’t upgrade for quite some time, sometimes in excess of 10 years.

Quote :

IPF only made financial sense to intel as a long term replacement of x86 when and where 64 bit support was required. With the arrival of EM64T, IPF's chances of ever achieving that, are getting close to zero.

Right on the fiscal and long term replacement of x86. But EM64T is nothing, as long as somewhere in there the technologies are compatible with IA64 it will be a smooth transition.

Intel likes transition that’s how they have always been.

Xeon

Scratch Here To Reveal Prize
In the case of over scratching contact THG for property damage claims.

Reply to Xeon

Quote :

No but you missed the point, the promise to make money on either core was the same.

Except that the IA64 promise is slipping away.

Quote :

But from a technology acceptance point IA-64 is too new people don't want to leave behind everything that's built around IA-32, remember Intel is aware of this.

With the advent of 64-bit x86 extensions, people have even less reason to go to IA64.

Quote :

For the long term I see the IA-64 technology evolving significantly better than IA-32 IPC cap and clock speeds vs. micron size leakage, yada yada.

The problem with that prediction is that research, development, and refinement efforts tend to focus on the profit-generating volume part. Otherwise x86 would never be where it is now.

Quote :

Intel has taken this into account and rest assured they will have the final say in IA selection for mainstream users.

No, the mainstream users will have the final say in IA selection for mainstream users. That's the way a competitive market works, and Intel doesn't have quite enough monopoly power to stop that.

Quote :

You again missed the point, the technology is gaining acceptance.

Except that AMD64 is gaining acceptance quite a bit faster.

Quote :

Where it lands people notice that's the kind of effect that they are looking for, it spurs talk about power, speed, resources the whole nine yards. When you convince the Top 100 companies in the world with a product priced and designed for them don't think fortune won't write about it.

Except that in many cases, AMD64 parts perform better. IA64 is primarily good at floating-point and RAS features (like lockstep, ECC cache, et al), and in some cases it can have better SMP scaling. Ironically, none of that actually has to do with its "64-bitness."

Quote :

No HP saw they were outgunned with Intel's solution.

That's not saying much; HP isn't that great at processor design. PA-RISC wasn't that great, and Alpha wasn't even HP's baby. Alpha was DEC's baby, then Compaq's neglected foster child.

IA64 was just a convenient means for HP to foist CPU development off on someone else while still building servers and operating systems around Intel's baby.

Quote :

It doesn't need to it's the market penetration they are looking at. When something is damned good don't think people won't talk about it.

When AMD64 matches so much of what IA64 does, don't expect the world to beat a path to Itanium's door.

Quote :

Right on the fiscal and long term replacement of x86. But EM64T is nothing, as long as somewhere in there the technologies are compatible with IA64 it will be a smooth transition.

Intel likes transition that's how they have always been.

How well can Intel pull off this kind of transition? One word (or number): 80186

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...

...an asthmatic werehamster?

<LHGPooBaa> Well, @#!& on me.

Reply to Kelledin

No offense, but it seems you are utterly clueless about the markets you are talking about..

>Intel has taken this into account and rest assured they
>will have the final say in IA selection for mainstream
>users.

So what are you saying.. Intel will indeed drive IA64 to the desktop ?

>As is every other public company here in North America
>what’s your point?

Point is intel can't continue to waste money on IPF forever (even if it can afford it) if it can not demonstrate a likely future ROI to its shareholders. Shareholders rarely have an horizon that exceeds 3-5 years btw.

> the technology is gaining acceptance.

Yes, at the current rate it will be where Alpha was 5 years ago by the end of the decade. Very bright future.. You still don't seem to get it. IPF is sold in a merchant model, intel doesnt sell systems.

-Power is developped and fabbed by IBM, and IBM makes tons of money on its (very) high margin I-series and P-series (and some selling POwer chips by the millions to Apple and soon microsoft and Sony). Therefore, IBM can afford to dump billions into Power development.

-PA Risc was/is developped by HP, and enabled it to sell truckloads of multimillion superdomes contracts, HP-UX licences, Non stop systems, etc, so you might think HP could afford to dump some money on cpu development, but they could no longer warrant the expense ! Hence, they handed their VLIW design to intel, killed PA Risc as well as Alpha and bought their chips from intel.

-UltraSparc was developped by Sun, enabled it to make a fortune selling high end gear and solaris solutions, but guess what.. they no longer could warrant the expenses, they killed US-V and will use Fujitsu Sparc64 cpu's instead.

-Intel developped IPF (together with HP), and sells ONLY cpu's (and some chipsets, big deal). This is a totally insignificant portion of the revenue in these markets. $1-4.000 per cpu may sound like a lot, but its *nothing* on a typical Altix/Superdome contract, yet intel is spending billions developping this chip.

Now, if HP and SUN couldnt warrant developping highend cpu's anymore, IBM only because of its volume with their Apple/Xbox/PS3 sales, even though these companies are reaping in revenue maybe 30-50x the cost of the cpu's, how do you expect intel to make a living on the most expensive (to develop) and least rewarding (revenue) part of this entire market ? The market just isnt big enough for a merchant model chip, no matter how good or how well accepted it is. It is what killed Alpha, it is what will kill IPF if intel can not sell IPF chips in higher volume, or does not manage to capture the majority of the high end Risc/Unix/HPC market. Neither of them looks likely.

>Once the movers and shakers get on the industries
>gaming/SOHO software/Specialized computing ect. Will build
>software to meet the new immerging technologies.

Oh gimme a break. Alpha has been there done that, went nowhere. Power, Mips and Alpha where very well entrenched in their high end markets, outperformed x86 by HUGE margins and tried to grow into the x86 market, with Windows support and everything, yet they failed miserably. Instead, ironically, x86 ate a very large part of their original market (workstation, entry level server, HPC) to the point where all three architures are either dead or dying now. IPF *could* have been different, if Intel had forced the market to switch from x86 to IA64, by not releasing 64 bit x86 chips, that was their last hope. Opteron killed it, plain simple. Now even 100% performance leads is not going to kill x86, IPF can never compete with the economy of scale and the incredible software support for x86.

>No HP saw they were outgunned with Intel’s solution

Do some reading or don't post on things you know nothing about. VLIW was a HP concept, they handed it over to intel asking if they didn't want to develop and fab the chip. intel turned it into the way overdue Merced dud, and HP took over the development of McKinley again to produce at least a somewhat respectable chip. IPF/VLIW/Epic originated at HP, not intel. And HP dumped PA risc development for no other reasons as cost cutting.

>It doesn’t need to it’s the market penetration

Please enlighten me, what is the difference between market "penetration" and market share ? And why on earth would penetration be more important ?

>they are looking at.

Indeed. But hardly buying it.

>When something is damned good don’t think people won’t talk
>about it.

LOL, get a clue. This market doesnt sell on hearsay.

> Add that all up and when Intel brings IA64 to a desktop
>solution there won’t be competition for 64bit 100% support
>home user solutions.

ROFL !!! They are still nearly nowhere in their primary market (highend unix), they are completely nowhere in the workstation market, but you think intel will manage to conquer the x86 desktop market with IPF now ? LMAO ! Not even intel has any hopes left for this, or they would have tried by now, and definately NOT have released EM64T. No way in hell IPF is going to play any role on the desktop for the next ten years, which could as well be forever in this market.

>Note even close enough people that buy that type of
>hardware don’t upgrade for quite some time, sometimes in
>excess of 10 years.

Waaaaaaaaaahahaha.. you're hilarious. So, Intel doesn't need 50% of the market because those "people" don't upgrade often ? Now there is some logic. Get a clue, intel needs to SELL chips, and competes with IBM, Sun, etc in doing so. Only so many chips/systems are sold each year, if intel wants to make money it needs a part of the pie. By my math, around HALF the pie, if not, it will cost intel more than it would generate revenue. long lifecycles has nothing to do with this. If anything, IBM/Sun/HP take advantage of this since even sales they achieved 10 years ago, still generate revenue for them in support/service/consulting, but not for intel.

> But EM64T is nothing, as long as somewhere in there the
>technologies are compatible with IA64 it will be a smooth
>transition.

Well they are completely, 100% incompatible, and there will not be a transistion. IPF will mainly serve as a cheap PA Risc replacement for HP, enabling Intel *maybe* 20-30% of the risc market if HP customers don't switch to IBM Power, Sun or x86 instead, but in a market that will shrink further and further because of x86 commodity chips. 10 years from here, it may be as small as the IBM mainframe market today, dinosaurs from the past, which still generates nice profits for IBM, but not because of the few dozen cpu's per quarter that are involved. Intel is scewed with IPF.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Reply to P4Man

>That's not saying much; HP isn't that great at processor
>design. PA-RISC wasn't that great

Hmm.. I kinda liked my old PA Risc workstation to tell you the truth, and I think they had a damn nice ISA. Performance was also right up there with rest, and even though its nearly dead now, even the recently released PA 8800 dual core chip still kicks some major butt in spite of being deprived of any serious development funds. It really wasn't a bad chip, much better than UltraSparcs or Mips, and not far behind power or alpha.

As for HP's design team.. Intel messed up Merced big time, and HP actually saved it by designing McKinley (which evolved into madison). So if Itanium is quite a respectfully performer today, its mostly because of HP's design team, and intels fab engineers. We have yet to see how well Intel's own design will be...

IMHO, intel is good at a lot of things, like process engineering (world class without a doubt), chipset design or compiler development; but designing cpu core's is not its greatest strength IMHO. Even AMD much smaller team is a lot better at it (but not quite as good in process engineering). Maybe the ex-alpha guys can bring us some magic again, but intel's own teams really aint that great IMHO.

In 25 years they made just one really nice design, and that is the PPo. Everything else ranged from complete disasters (80186, iAPX 432, i960, Tejas) to piss poor (286, merced, willamette, prescott) to mediocre at best (3/486, pentium, northwood*,). Not a fabulous trackrecord...

*northwood was a mediocre design IMHO, saved by excellent fabbing, chipsets and compiler support. If Athlon had enjoyed similar benefits, it would have been a much better chip.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Reply to P4Man

Yea, what he said.

Reply to Zeekfu

....but wait. That sounded good too.

Reply to Zeekfu

...still more interesting points...

Reply to Zeekfu

......wait.....what were we talking about????????

Reply to Zeekfu

We were talking about what xeon said.
"When something is damned good don’t think people won’t talk about it."
Just remove the word "good".

Reply to endyen

My prediction is that after the 4th quarter...

Reply to Zeekfu

I'll have a whole dollar...

Reply to Zeekfu

And you are doing it your 2 cents worth at a time.

Reply to endyen

he he:> )

Edited by zeekfu on 06/15/04 10:12 PM.

Reply to Zeekfu

"Where does the scope begin and you’re European short sightedness end?"

ROFL

My sig is better than yours.

Reply to FUGGER

Quote :

Alpha has been there done that, went nowhere. Power, Mips and Alpha where very well entrenched in their high end markets, outperformed x86 by HUGE margins and tried to grow into the x86 market, with Windows support and everything, yet they failed miserably.

From my personal experience I see the Alpha as having gone nowhere purely because they tried to press into the x86 market and failed miserably, and that in turn made a lot of people wary about Alphas.

I've still got an Alpha box sitting under my desk with an Alpha-specific version of Red Hat and Alpha patches for NT4, Dev Stuidio 6, etc. It had been intended to pave the way into the Alpha future for my company by compiling our software for Alphas. It was a complete failure.

Using the goofy x86 emulation, well over 50% of the packages that I tried to install on the Alpha box (including InstallShield of all things) wouldn't even finish their install without crashing. And whenever I would contact any company about an Alpha version of their software so that I could actually, you know, do work, I always got back a response of either "we don't support Alpha" or "we will support Alpha when Microsoft does". (The latter being strange since, as I said, I had an Alpha patch for NT4 and Dev Studio 6, so clearly M$ already supported Alpha.)

And I saw the effect that this had on my company's confidence in the DEC Alpha as a platform. I mean I couldn't even get Alpha versions of all of the software libraries that I needed to compile our software, and even if I could compile the software I still couldn't even make a distribution to deliver it to customers. And it was all because of a lack of direct software support and a really crappy x86 emulation.

So my personal experience of the fall of the DEC Alpha was not that it was financially unviable, but that DEC pushed the Alpha into the x86 market, but the lack of software support pushed it back out and at the same time gave the Alpha a bad taste in many people's mouths.

Had the Alpha never been pushed as an x86 replacement it might have done quite well in its true market. People really liked it until they tried to replace their Pentiums with one.

<pre>"Build a man a fire and he's warm for the rest of the evening.
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life." - Steve Taylor</pre>

Reply to slvr_phoenix

I think you are getting two things wrong and you are looking at this with a PC mindset. Alpha didn't lack industry strength software support, it ran OpenVMS and Tru64. Not exactly OS's that are known to be crappy. Those where among the best OS's for Alpha's original market, and actually they still are.

Also, any company judging Alpha on its stability or performance running x86 binaries in emulation under wintoys should fire whomever responsible. That is like buying a Mac G5, installing VirtuaPC and complaining it doesnt run the x86 version of Need for Speed III, so surely running SAP under AIX on a Power5+ server would be a terrible idea, lets get SUN boxes instead ..

No, the total absense of desktop&windows software is definately not what killed Alpha in the high end, but it is a nice illustration of three other things:

1) Alpha needed a higher volume market than just the highend Unix server market to warrant to expenses. DEC kept bleeding money on it. Itanium take note.

2)Binary software emulation is a very poor substitute for native software. Itanium, take note.

3)how hard it is to replace x86 on the desktop or even workstation market, and performance alone doesn't get you there. I think Intel already noticed that

I've never had the pleasure of toying with an Alpha Workstation myself, but collegues of mine did, and actually liked it a lot, and told me it ran most x86 binaries pretty well under FX!32. Still, there is not much point in buying a system >2x as expensive just to cripple it running emulated software which may or may not work. IPF would face the exact same challenges if ever intel wanted to crack the workstation of even desktop market with it, but with the minor difference that Alpha was roughly 2x as fast as x86 boxes back then, and often where considerably faster even emulating x86 binaries under FX!32, where IPF is roughly on par running native software.

Your experience does explain why Alpha never took over x86 on the desktop, but not why it failed in the high end where windows or x86 compatibility where total non issues.

>Had the Alpha never been pushed as an x86 replacement it
>might have done quite well in its true market

No, one has nothing to do with the other. Power(PC) failed just as miserably trying to replace x86 on the windows desktop market, but it had zero effect on its high end market.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Reply to P4Man

P4man
it funny you have mentioned SAP.
SAP on windows has been crying out for 64bit for years.
Xeon processors themselvs have been well capable of running SAP in terms of CPU utilization, however in order to get the number of required users more and more application servers had to be added purly for memory reasons.
This is one area where Itanium is starting to gain momentum. I have a number of customers who are evaluating Itanium/windows 64bit and a number who have already migrated.
A large number are also waiting for AMD64/Intel64 bit.
We have both in our labs for evaluation (AMD64 on Linux is looking very tasty)

Reply to Stimpy

>SAP on windows has been crying out for 64bit for years.

.. but I've not yet read an announcement of SAP supporting AMD64/EM64T.. did I miss it ?

>We have both in our labs for evaluation

Both meaning operon/itanium or "Xeon 64" ?

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Reply to P4Man

Quote :

Except that the IA64 promise is slipping away.

So why am I not seeing AMD bringing in a cool 1 billion? But I will state it again this is part of the game plan. You can’t turn people to new technologies before they are ready and comfortable.

I was there for the 16-32bit switch and tell me Kelly how many years did it take them to work out the 32bit mess?

Quote :

With the advent of 64-bit x86 extensions, people have even less reason to go to IA64.

Stepping stone.

Quote :

The problem with that prediction is that research, development, and refinement efforts tend to focus on the profit-generating volume part. Otherwise x86 would never be where it is now.

You got to spend money to make money.

Quote :

No, the mainstream users will have the final say in IA selection for mainstream users. That's the way a competitive market works, and Intel doesn't have quite enough monopoly power to stop that.

Care to wager?

Quote :

Except that AMD64 is gaining acceptance quite a bit faster.

Is that so?

Quote :

Except that in many cases, AMD64 parts perform better. IA64 is primarily good at floating-point and RAS features (like lockstep, ECC cache, et al), and in some cases it can have better SMP scaling. Ironically, none of that actually has to do with its "64-bitness."

I never said it had to do with its "64-bitness", what I did say was as far as 64bit IA's go IA-64 looks to offer more.

Quote :

That's not saying much; HP isn't that great at processor design. PA-RISC wasn't that great, and Alpha wasn't even HP's baby. Alpha was DEC's baby, then Compaq's neglected foster child.

IA64 was just a convenient means for HP to foist CPU development off on someone else while still building servers and operating systems around Intel's baby.

Yaw that makes sense HP is so screwed for cash they bought Compaq, man they are certainly strapped. They dumped it because Intel's solution was better. Maybe x86 emulation module on the Itanium could get some Alpha inspiration.

Quote :

When AMD64 matches so much of what IA64 does, don't expect the world to beat a path to Itanium's door.

Really care to show me a reputable site that shows the Itanium getting mopped up by anything from AMD. But its you Kelly so I know the x86 emulation will come up, so Ill say it now the Itanium sucks are running native x86 code.

Quote :

How well can Intel pull off this kind of transition? One word (or number): 80186

Not a damned clue but I sure do like to debate about it.

Quote :

No offense, but it seems you are utterly clueless about the markets you are talking about.

LoL coming from a European, man you guys are sure funny. Remember our government doesn’t baby sit our free trade, so it’s a safe bet you don’t have the slightest clue how North America business works.

Quote :

So what are you saying.. Intel will indeed drive IA64 to the desktop ?

Hmm last I read it was a x86 replacement, when and where is unknown im not a phycic, but I am sure you are.

Quote :

Point is intel can't continue to waste money on IPF forever (even if it can afford it) if it can not demonstrate a likely future ROI to its shareholders. Shareholders rarely have an horizon that exceeds 3-5 years btw.

Is there some law I don’t know about that says you can’t spend money? Old saying still holds takes money to make money.

Quote :

Yes, at the current rate it will be where Alpha was 5 years ago by the end of the decade. Very bright future.. You still don't seem to get it. IPF is sold in a merchant model, intel doesnt sell systems.

Got some business models and fiscal projections to support that, Otherwise we are simply both grasping at straws and man do I hate straw.

Quote :

Alpha has been there done that, went nowhere.

Bad timing as far as I am concerned also lack of real software/compiler/and hardware support stunted that growth.

Quote :

Power, Mips and Alpha where very well entrenched in their high end markets, outperformed x86 by HUGE margins and tried to grow into the x86 market, with Windows support and everything, yet they failed miserably.

You pointed out the obvious there, your words "MIPS and Alpha where very well entrenched in their high end markets". High end markets such as HPC do not step into the bounds of desktop users. “tried to grow into the x86 market" pretty tough to grow into a 32bit environment with a 64bit chip that can only emulate it at barely reasonable speeds. Also windows gravy market is x86 as well as 87% of all the major software developers. You don’t want to get off the gravy train before its done its course.

Quote :

Do some reading or don't post on things you know nothing about. VLIW was a HP concept, they handed it over to intel asking if they didn't want to develop and fab the chip. intel turned it into the way overdue Merced dud, and HP took over the development of McKinley again to produce at least a somewhat respectable chip. IPF/VLIW/Epic originated at HP, not intel. And HP dumped PA risc development for no other reasons as cost cutting.

Got some links to back up the Intel lets other people design their products for them.

Quote :

Indeed. But hardly buying it.

They are considering it though that’s the point.

Quote :

ROFL !!! They are still nearly nowhere in their primary market (highend unix), they are completely nowhere in the workstation market, but you think intel will manage to conquer the x86 desktop market with IPF now ? LMAO ! Not even intel has any hopes left for this, or they would have tried by now, and definately NOT have released EM64T. No way in hell IPF is going to play any role on the desktop for the next ten years, which could as well be forever in this market.

Can’t read when, when and WHEN!!! I don’t know when that’s the point of the debate trying to pin point when Intel will bring it over to the desktop market.

Quote :

Well they are completely, 100% incompatible

Yaw ok if you say so, over that last 35 years has Intel ever designed something that did not compatibility in mind, and don’t say the Itanium because even the first one could emulate x86.

Xeon

Scratch Here To Reveal Prize
In the case of over scratching contact THG for property damage claims.

Reply to Xeon

*bows*

Xeon

Scratch Here To Reveal Prize
In the case of over scratching contact THG for property damage claims.

Reply to Xeon

Ok just a few things i wanted to point out that i dont really agree with here.

I think x86-64 isnt a stepping stone for IA-64, i dont think the two are related at all really. In the future, I think x86-64 wil come to dominate, slowly leaving out x86-32 completely, and IA-64 will try to coexist, but I highly doubt that design will ever take over the desktop market, i just dont see any trends that point in that direction. I know intel has a war chest it can unleash to push tech, such as ddr2, pci-e, btx, but i dont think IA-64 is in that same league. Your talking about an entire architecture switch, I dont think even intel could spend enough to push the whole market in that direction. It would take alot more suppliers, and other manufacturers to switch the market there, and dare i say it, it would take amd switching over as well lol.

I do think x86-64 will take off quicker then IA-64 has, simply becuase of its ease of use and backward compatibility, one of the main reasons people havent run to itanium for anything other then its high end server type market where specialized apps are not uncommon.

Its very possible you could see intel slowly back off from that x86 replacement status for IA-64 and slowly swallow thier pride and accept x86-64 as the leading architecture for desktop machines in mainstream markets. Thats not to say they will give up on IA-64. They will undoubtedly push aggresively at making it work in the unix, hpc, type markets.

The step from x86-64 to IA-64 would be just as radical and difficult as a transition from x86-32 to IA-64, this middle step doesnt help that.

Also, dont forget that we may nto have seen anything from intel about x86-64 if it wasnt for amd pushing that to market. I relaly think intel wanted customers to have to go to itanium for 64bit support and had no plans to roll out x86-64 until now that they have to respond to AMD. Intel is ina balancing act right now, so itll be interesting to see how much intel plays up, or downplays, x86-64. I have a feeling they will downplay it as much as possible, while supporting it at the same time.

Reply to trooper11

>So why am I not seeing AMD bringing in a cool 1 billion?

As compared to Itanium chips ? Opteron outsold IPF by a factor 3 or 4 by chip units. Last year, with virtually no oem support yet. taking bets for this year ? my money is on somewhere between 10-1 and 25-1.

>You got to spend money to make money.

You also have to spend money to waste money.

>LoL coming from a European, man you guys are sure funny
> Remember our government doesn’t baby sit our free trade,
>so it’s a safe bet you don’t have the slightest clue how
>North America business works.

I'm sure this is very relevant for the discussion at hand. "I can't win on arguments since I don't know the first thing about big tin, but I'm american and you're not, so I know better". grow up dude.

>Really care to show me a reputable site that shows the
>Itanium getting mopped up by anything from AMD.

http://www.sap.com/benchmark
http://www.spec.org/ (specjbb and java appserver)
Not that I expect you to be able to interprete those correctly. And if you find some Itanium benchmarks on Exchange, Pro Engineer, Siebel, Navision, let me know so we can compare.

>Except that AMD64 is gaining acceptance quite a bit faster.
>Is that so?

You'd have to be blind not to see this. AMD64 is currently enjoying at least as much ISV support and momentum as IPF, while its only a year old verus 5 for IPF.

>Yaw that makes sense HP is so screwed for cash they bought
>Compaq, man they are certainly strapped. They dumped it
>because Intel's solution was better

My god you are ignorant. here are a few clues for ya:
<A HREF="http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2001/apr-jun/itanium.html" target="_new">http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2001/apr-jun/itanium.html</A>
<A HREF="http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=32053&seqNum=3" target="_new">http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=32053&seqNum=3</A>
HP, and no one else pioneered EPIC. And they handed it to intel for cutting costs. Intel screwed up merced, and HP took over to design McKinley. This is IPF 101.

> Maybe x86 emulation module on the Itanium could get some
>Alpha inspiration.

x86 emulation in hardware is being canned.

>Hmm last I read it was a x86 replacement

Oh you got a link for that ? I *never* read that anywhere from intel, and I assure you (unlike you) I have read quite a bit on the subject.

>Is there some law I don’t know about that says you can’t
>spend money? Old saying still holds takes money to make
>money.

So spending is good no matter what hu.. Well i'm sure using that logic the money spent on iAXP-432 micromainframe was also money well spent. Same for the gazillions invested in 80186, 960, tejas, ...

You seem to think everything intel touches turns into gold, but the harsh reality is they never made a buck on ANY of their products except x86 cpu's. Not on attempts to create risc cpu's (which all flopped miserably), not on networking cards, motherboards, sometimes a bit on flash, but more often than not even that generated (significant) losses. Read intels financial statement, it might open your eyes. x86 pays the bills, and the rest burns cash.

>Got some business models and fiscal projections to support
>that,

Yes, I did some analysis based on the numbers I had, and I already told you where I ended up. Intel needs ~50% of the unix market in cpu shipments (500k units) at their current ASPs, and only then they might break even by 2015. If you PM me your email, I might even dig up the excel sheet for ya.

>Bad timing as far as I am concerned also lack of real
>software/compiler/and hardware support stunted that growth.

Timing was perfect at the time the world moved from 16 to 32 bit OS's and x86 was trailing Risc performance by a significant margin. There could not have been a better time. "lack of real software/compiler/and hardware support" is also such a useless empty claim I will only respond by saying it was far better than what IPF currently enjoy for the workstation let alone, desktop market. And it was not only better for the high end unix market, it still is very significantly better. But what would you know , you've never even heard of Tru64.

>Got some links to back up the Intel lets other people
>design their products for them.

See above. not knowing basic stuff like this shows your colours. Why the hell do you even want to argue this, you know as much about it as about cold fusion.

>Can’t read when, when and WHEN!!! I don’t know when that’s
>the point of the debate trying to pin point when Intel will
>bring it over to the desktop market.

if, if and IF. Because the answer is more likely: never. Chances are way better 10-20 years from here we will run on Power derived hardware than IPF.

>Yaw ok if you say so, over that last 35 years has Intel
>ever designed something that did not compatibility in mind,

i432 -> flopped monumentally
i960 -> flopped miserably (well ended up in laserprinters LOL)
IPF -> may become a nice printer processor in the next decade or maybe DSP style chip for in routers and switches .

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Reply to P4Man

Hmm.. either you are rephrazing older posts of me, or we agree completely. That is exactly the way I see it.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Reply to P4Man

Quote :

So why am I not seeing AMD bringing in a cool 1 billion?

AMD doesn't have to bring in "a cool 1 billion" to make life hard for IA64.

Quote :

You can't turn people to new technologies before they are ready and comfortable.

True enough. AMD capitalized on that.

Quote :

I was there for the 16-32bit switch and tell me Kelly how many years did it take them to work out the 32bit mess?

Depends on what you mean by "work out the 32bit mess."

Developers were diving head-first into "the 32bit mess" before there was even a 32-bit operating system. It didn't take much for software to wrest control of the processor from DOS and do its own thing with 32-bit registers and "flat mode."

Quote :

Stepping stone.

More like comfortable resting place. Especially as in many cases, there's no real benefit to stepping "up" to IA64.

Quote :

You got to spend money to make money.

And the money is being spent on extending x86 more than on refining IA64. Itanium just doesn't make enough fast enough for a profit-driven beast to justify focusing on it.

Quote :

Care to wager?

Gladly.

Quote :

I never said it had to do with its "64-bitness", what I did say was as far as 64bit IA's go IA-64 looks to offer more.

Looks tend to be deceiving.

Quote :

Really care to show me a reputable site that shows the Itanium getting mopped up by anything from AMD. But its you Kelly so I know the x86 emulation will come up, so Ill say it now the Itanium sucks are running native x86 code.

I didn't say "mopped up." I said "matched."

When AMD64 costs less, runs cooler, and supports much more software, it doesn't have to do more than match IA64 in benchmarks.

Quote :

Can't read when, when and WHEN!!! I don't know when that's the point of the debate trying to pin point when Intel will bring it over to the desktop market.

At this point, it's a lot more "if" than "when."

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...

...an asthmatic werehamster?

<LHGPooBaa> Well, @#!& on me.

Reply to Kelledin

YOU:
Point is intel can't continue to waste money on IPF forever (even if it can afford it) if it can not demonstrate a likely future ROI to its shareholders. Shareholders rarely have an horizon that exceeds 3-5 years

Reply:
So have you sold your AMD stock.You get my point many corp dont make money still they are there.AMD ATI most ram\mobo manufacturer.

YOU:
Yes, at the current rate it will be where Alpha was 5 years ago by the end of the decade. Very bright future.. You still don't seem to get it. IPF is sold in a merchant model, intel doesnt sell systems.

reply:
Intel does sell itanium 4\2 way to OEM and they add they own service sold application compiler and programming tool.
You say IBM make money cuz they have high volume on Power in fact IBM microelectronic devision have loss 200 million again.Also you say EMT64 is incompatible with IA64.True but for how long

i need to change useur name.

Reply to juin

lol no i wasnt refrasing any of your older posts sorry if it sounded that way lol

Reply to trooper11

Quote :

reply:
Intel does sell itanium 4\2 way to OEM and they add they own service sold application compiler and programming tool.
You say IBM make money cuz they have high volume on Power in fact IBM microelectronic devision have loss 200 million again.Also you say EMT64 is incompatible with IA64.True but for how long

wait, are you trying to say that EMT64 is a transition point to IA64? i just dont see how, since its in line with AMD64. EMT64 wasnt soemthing intel wanted to see used i have a feeling. This is thier answer to AMD64, to keep the marketing machine well oiled. They had to answer back with thier own solution.

I doubt they really want to make any plans around EMT64 and just want to force consumers to change over to IA64. Either way, the change over, if it ever comes, wont be as easy as that, itll be a tough time, pulling teeth to drag everyone in line.

Reply to trooper11

Boy did you miss the boat. Let's leave American tax laws out of this.
"You say IBM make money cuz they have high volume on Power in fact IBM microelectronic devision have loss 200 million again."
So the Itanium like part of big blue lost money due to onshore production costs. See that division is responsible for making electronics.
On the other hand the "offshore" service division made huge profits, which the mother company could in part write down and in part discount due to the losses of the electronics devision.
You see, the profit is in service, not production. Intel is a production company, not a service company. They dont have a massively profitable service devision that requires a loss from the production devision, so they can write it off.

Reply to endyen

Intel seems to be a mess right now. They need to get Itanium onto the broader workstation/high end market to start regaining invested money at a reasonable rate.
Yet they need to push out Pentium/Xeon with iAMD-64 soon to not loose marketshare to AMD, BUT such a move would hurt Itanium sales.
But then they probably cant be too picky right now AMD has taken the performance and technology crown away and most of Intel seems to be in dissaray, nobody knows what happens next as their roadmaps change by the day and thanks to the sucess of the isreali development division the americans look like a bunch of retards because of that leaky transistor mess they call prescott.
What happens next is damage control (my guess is they will start by killing further Itanium development if not already done so).

Reply to amd

>So have you sold your AMD stock

Yes.

>You get my point many corp dont make money still they are
>there

So what ? They strive to make money. If a product no longer has the potential to make the company money or at least offer some benefit to it that outweighs its cost, it gets canned.

>Intel does sell itanium 4\2 way to OEM

Yes, In the same way AMD sells chipsets. Not because they want to, or make money on it, nor because it fits the business model, but as an enabler. Those Tiger systems also don't provide anywhere near the kindo or level of revenue I was referring to, there are just barebone boxes that help sell chips; no software, no expensive disksubsytems, no memory thats resold at 2x the marketprice, no lucrative 15%service contract, OS licences, .. Tiger systems probably have the same gross margin as the cpu's in them, they add nothing to Intel's bottom line, very much unlike Integrity, altix, superdome, Pseries,..

>You say IBM make money cuz they have high volume on Power
>in fact IBM microelectronic devision have loss 200 million
>again

Exactly. But that loss enabled IBM to sell $3.8 billion in high margin server hardware, $3.5B in software, and a large chunk of the $11.1B of global services. Quarterly numbers btw. Of course, like any company, IBM strives to make its BUs profitable, but developping Power chips makes a lot of sense even if this generates losses. Its an enabler to make it sell highly profitable products in excess of $10B/Q. Very much unlike intel.

>EMT64 is incompatible with IA64.True but for how long

Yeah, maybe Itanium will migrate to iAMD64 indeed

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Reply to P4Man

P4man,
Opteron and Xeon64 are in our labs being evaluated, so no support announced yet. Unfortunatly we can't do much with Xeon64 bit yet until MS release the 64bit patch. But there have been some impressive interal benchmarks with Opteron on Linux. Watch this space

Reply to Stimpy

> Unfortunatly we can't do much with Xeon64 bit yet until MS
>release the 64bit patch

You mean you can not unstall the 64 bit beta (for opteron) on the Xeon 64 ?

> But there have been some impressive interal benchmarks
>with Opteron on Linux.

I see no reason you wouldn't be able to run the same (64 bit) Linux distro's on the Xeon64 either ? Are you saying they are "incompatible" (or maybe the OS installer just doesn't properly recognizes the chip ?)

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Reply to P4Man

I wouldn't presume to know Stimpy's situation, but I can speculate on Xeon64 readiness in general...

Quote :

You mean you can not unstall the 64 bit beta (for opteron) on the Xeon 64 ?

IIRC the 64-bit beta WinXP got to working on Xeon64 only around build 1100 or so. MS probably needed to do a little more to cope with Xeon64's quirks.

Quote :

I see no reason you wouldn't be able to run the same (64 bit) Linux distro's on the Xeon64 either ? Are you saying they are "incompatible" (or maybe the OS installer just doesn't properly recognizes the chip ?)

Probably the same situation with Linux distros as with Win64. Sure there are some out for AMD64, but bootstrapping out of the chicken-and-egg scenario onto Xeon64 isn't an easy thing for end-users. It probably requires booting into 32-bit mode, setting up a cross-compiler that can target AMD64, and then cross-compiling a more recent kernel that can grok Xeon64.

Some Xeon64-compatible distros are trickling out, though--Fedora ought to be working on Xeon64, as RedHat's already documenting some DMA quirkiness about it.

The "rumble in the jungle" seems to be universally agreed that Xeon64 is going to be a poor performer though. MSFT hints at that without saying anything definite, RedHat documents an ugly performance hit with the DMA quirk, and there's general rumors that the Prescott ALU drops to a little above half-speed to do 64-bit. :eek: Take all that for what it's worth.

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...

...an asthmatic werehamster?

<LHGPooBaa> Well, @#!& on me.

Reply to Kelledin

>The "rumble in the jungle" seems to be universally agreed
>that Xeon64 is going to be a poor performer though

The only thing that I (seem to remember I)'ve heard by people who's opinion/knowledge I trust, is Xeon64 might take a hit in some scenario's where more than 4 GB Ram is involved, but that wouldn't be anything major.

>there's general rumors that the Prescott ALU drops to a
>little above half-speed to do 64-bit.

I heard those, but haven't seen or heard any credible info on it. It seems to have been based on some misunderstandings, and you know how it goes with rumours like that.. for now, I wouldn't put much faith in it, but I guess we will find out soon enough.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Reply to P4Man

Forum CPU & Components : CPUs - Microsoft slowly backs away from Itanium

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