Microsoft Phasing Out Support for Intel Itanium

[megamanx00]

The Itanium always had a better, forward thinking architecture. Problem was, Intel wanted to keep it to themselves while AMD figured it would be cheaper for them to just ad 64-bit extensions to existing chips which saved software devs a lot of time. Also, the Itanium was architecture was alot different from the x86 chips Intel traditionally supported so the initial compilers sucked. It took a while for them to develop a compiler to properly take advantage of the architecture, but by that time the chips themselves were behind.

So yes, I like the ideas behind the Itanium Architecture. The reality that x86 designs are rather inefficient is hidden by the fact that AMD and Intel keep pushing out better, faster chips with more cores. Sadly though, the architecture of the Itanium was too far ahead of the software, and AMD took advantage of that with it's Athlon 64 based Opterons making Intel follow suit with 64-bit Xeons and thus pushing Itanium to the sidelines.

 

[Hatecrime69]

[citation][nom]ptroen[/nom]Itanium is actually a great idea it's just phasing out the x86 instructions is downright tricky. I'm surprised why x86 manufactors haven't introduced new cores with only x86 instructions. This would be the easiest way to solve this problem in the long run.[/citation]

in theory it's a good idea, however in practice, most software is still 32 bit even in the server space, and the Itanium is forced to emulate these things, where a cheaper x86-64 cpu can do the 32-bit programs natively..it's hardware that software just isn't ready for

 

[deltatux]

Meh, Itanium was practically dead when it hit the market. Finally Microsoft woke up and just cut the development cost.

I was never a fan of Itanium, IBM always had the forward thinking chips with its POWER and POWERPC line of processors. If we were to shift to a new processor technology, I'd rather us use IBM designs.

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]dgingeri[/nom]darnit, quoted the wrong post. That was supposed to be a counter to the post about x64 being slower than x86.[/citation]

Either way, you're wrong. You're forgetting that you put pressure on the memory and caches, and get fewer hits because of it. Consequently, you wait more on memory, so 64-bit is going to be slower in many cases.

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]dgingeri[/nom]The problem here is that Itanium costs 8 times as much and uses more than twice the power. Using x64, a company can cut costs by 75%, cut power by 10-15%, cut cooling by 10-15%, and get the same performance. There are just guys out there who don't want to change because then they wouldn't "be needed". They want to secure their jobs rather than save the company money. These same type of guys are resisting the death of both OS400 and many Unix applications. Wintel/x64 can keep up in many of these arenas, although not all. Microsoft and Intel are catching up in the areas where they don't currently keep up. All the while, there are guys out there resisting the change because they wouldn't know how to take care of the new systems (even though it is much easier to learn, thus the labor market for Windows Server admins is wider and cheaper) and they'd lose their exclusivity. People who hold back change just to keep from having to learn a new job make me sick. The wave is coming. There is no getting out of the way. Adapt or die.[/citation]

I'm guessing from this post you don't understand mission critical type of applications, and are really talking about mainstream stuff. Your post makes sense only within that context.

Nehalem-Ex comes a bit closer, but it doesn't have all the reliability features that Itanium based systems do. So, you need something to stay up, and give you the correct results, as close to all the time as possible, x86 can't do it. It's not intended for that, and there are inherent compromises, some of which reduce performance and increase power use because of the way the circuits are designed. x86 isn't willing to lower performance and increase power use to do it. It's a different market.

 

[belardo]

LOL... and intel never fails or screws up....

Intel and HP put so much money into this chip, and even recently in 2010, they were talking about its future as a high-end server class chip. Well... maybe it has a future, running MS-OS wasn't its strong suit anyway.

When AMD started shipping 64bit CPUs about... 6~7 years ago, it quickly blew away Itanium in sales units sold. The AMD Opterons were (A) Faster (B) easier to program (C) requires no custom hardware (D) costs a lot less.

It was years before intel admits defeat and soon add 64bit abilities to thier XEON and of course consumer CPUs. So yeah, intel is using AMD-code for 64bit.

Whole AMD is having severe problems with their CPUs in the server market... they are a lot healthier than HP with Itaniums.