OS FOR THE ITANIUM!

[Phelk]

~ Side note, we are a single copy of running IRIX on 512 processors. this is a world record atm, and was achieved only this month. ~

Ho-hum... Pixar (makers of Toy Story etc) has bought some real 64bit machines totalling 2000 * UltraSPARC III processors and 4 terabytes of memory.

<A HREF="http:// www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2001-04/sunflash.20010425.2.html " target="_new">http:// www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2001-04/sunflash.20010425.2.html </A>

This is real 64bit processing for a real business. Believe me, it is not that hard to write distributed code for a controlled environment. However, observing Fugger's posts he obviously has difficulting writing anything.

<font color=blue> The Revolution starts here... as soon as I finish my coffee </font color=blue>

 

[Kelledin]

Errr...NT 4 actually did support the Alpha. I know, because I loaded it on an old AXP150 (the Jensen POS, all EISA and 540MB SCSI drives. Playing with power!)

Win2K was originally planned to support the Alpha as well, but those plans got scrapped a little while before launch. The last release candidate for the Alpha is still floating around on the web...not legally of course .

Btw, I scrapped the NT installation on that AXP150 and put Digital UNIX on that mofo. Much happier with a <i>real</i> O/S on that thing, kthx...

Kelledin

bash-2.04$ kill -9 1
init: Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?

 

[Bud]

I wonder if INTEL will wait for AMD to introduce 64/32-bit first? Then, after people start slowly getting 64-bit apps INTEL could introduce their 64-bit hardware and be a superstar.....And to that end, if AMD anticipated this they could delay their 64/32-bit hardware in order to force
INTEL’s hand and blow their strategy...which would make us, the consumer wait....but I don't think they care about us anyway. ...Just some musing.



I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.

 

[bhc]

Intel has worked on its 64 bit processor long before AMD came up with the 32/64bit strategy. Itanium was supposed to come out in 1999, when AMD was concentrating on the release of Athlon so it could compete in the 32bit arena. Well, there were a lot of delays and problems for Itanium (many times it's referred as Itanic as in Titanic), which gave AMD a chance to catch up. So what we have now is certainly not by Intel's design.

In any way, the software work for x86/64bit will NOT work the Intel IA64, and vice versa. So ultimately, only one approach will prevail. Intel has money and muscle behind its approach, while AMD has the x86 inertia and compatibility in its corner. It will be fun to see how it comes out.

**Spin all you want, but we the paying consumers will have the final word**