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Linux Leads MS in Itanium Support
lizrd writes "The New York Times is reporting (yeah, yeah, you gotta sign to read it) that several Linux distros will be shipping stable versions of Linux for Intel's new 64-bit Itanium chip on the day that it is released to the public. Microsoft however will not be supplying a version of Windows for Itanium until sometime in the fall of next year, several months after the expected May release of the new processor."
What I'm saying is, what if Itanium+Linux=crap just gets shortened to Linux=crap in the minds of some folks, even though the shaky new Itanium platform was really at fault?
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
So MS would wisely wait a few weeks or months to make sure their OS installs 99+ percent of the time.
But immediately upon the release of a new processor, just how great of a diversity of different types of hardware do you anticipate there to be?
Me: not that many. Distro vendors could likely support them all well. It's not like trying to support the diversity of legacy x86 boxers. MS has a huge collection of knowledge about such boxes -- often boxes which no longer even have documentation available, giving them a tremendous advantage autodetecting older hardware. And they've had a long time to perfect their autodetection techniques. (Well, polish, not perfect.) But for the future Linux gets to start off on a more level playing field. As time marches on and legacy boxes go to heaven (or hell, maybe only non-x86 boxes go to heaven?) this only works more and more to Linux's advantage.
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Perhaps the PC industry has always remained stuck in the x86 rut not out of choice, but because it couldn't escape
Er, no. Transitioning to NT for Alpha with FX!32 was no more technically difficult than the 68k-PPC transition. The reason that the PC industry has "remained stuck in the x86 rut" is because it didn't have a dictator like Apple to force a transition, and because RISC isn't magically superior.
Software designed and optimized for a consumer-grade desktop RISC chip doesn't perform any better than software designed and optimized for a consumer-grade desktop x86 chip. Relative "elegance" is irrelevant -- there is no material benefit to a switch.
Nor is it an effect of market position giving higher-volume consumer chipmakers an advantage -- otherwise a top-of-the-line Motorola chip would certainly outperform a top-of-the-line AMD chip, given the 1995 positions of each company. But the Athlon manages to kick the consumer-grade PPC's ass anyway.
All the bullshit about RISC superiority is just that -- bullshit. Inertia is an excuse, not an explanation.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
There are a lot of hightly specialised Linux distros out there (check out the distros page on lwn.net) with all sorts of uses (routers, terminals, servers, workstations, ...). There is no real shortage of resources for Linux developement. When something new is needed, it's generally done by the group that needs it which is often a new group, not an old one abandoning their previous project.
Bill - aka taniwha
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Bill - aka taniwha
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Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
How backwards compatible is the Itanium?
The article mentions it contains a 32-bit section which allows it to run older x86 instructions.
What I'm wondering is if the reason for the new versions is just to take advantage of the new 64-bit world, or if you could actually just install say Windows 95 onto it and live crippled?
Just kind of curious how important this OS battle is to the adoption of the processor.
I'm not sure what kind of market demand there will be anyway. I don't see most computers today as being CPU-bound.
It's not really even significant. I doubt there are going to be a tremendous number of Itanium sales next year, anyway. It's nice that early adopters use Linux, but not Windows, but not very significant.
The more interesting question is about gcc. How is support for Itanium coming with gcc? The EPIC architecture probably requires a lot from the compiler to take good use of it. I assume that gcc *does* support Itanium, since Linux is running on it, and porting Linux to another compiler would probably be more effort than porting it to another platform that gcc targets.
If Microsoft has a significantly better compiler, Windows will probably be a much better system for Itanium. I've heard of Intel's involvement with gcc, so I doubt that MS will do much better, but still, support is just a baby step in the battle for the best system.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
Has anyone moved up to a 128 bit processor? DEC had a good long head start, having introduced a 16 bit procesor back in 1970 (My DEC assembly language book hypothesizes that a 32 bit chip should enable faster processing but would be prohibitively expensive to make :-) but they haven't kept that margin, though I seem to recall that they have a great wide memory bus.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The whole POINT of the "PC REVOLUTION" was in "commodity hardware". That is, get tons of manufacturers churning out parts that ran to the PC spec set forth by IBM (forth - um, open firmware joke, get it? nevermind).
The point was to develop this cheap-ass piece of junk platform to the point where people didn't need to pay extortionate fees to Sun, DEC, SGI, HP, Intergraph, and the mother-ship, IBM, etc. Now, DEC is gone, HP is just another Packard-Bell, so is Intergraph, and SGI, is acquisition fodder. Only Sun and IBM really remain as strong players. I'm guessing that has nothing at all to do with the PC revolution, and more to do with the Internet revolution and the need for bulletproof servers.
Until Intel got a monopoly in chips (AMD was a nice try, but are they REALLY positioned to harm intel? Last I checked, intel was still dictating platform standards) - it was an open platform and the dream was alive. Someday, there was going to be a beefy and robust PC that could replace expensive minis at commodity hardware prices, and run an OS grandma could admin. Then Intel figured out that with a monopoly, they wouldn't have to compete with any other players, they could set the standards, and block this insanity from happening. Sure, they'll still be productin commodity hardware, but they'll be using the enterprise pricing model. And using their IA-32 market dominance to crowbar Itanium into the enterprise server market, no matter how inferior it is, technically. If it runs Win32, it's golden. No matter how overpriced it is. No matter how much laughter it generates when placed next to REAL enterprise hardware.
It's called market segmentation. The Celeron/Xeon thing was a small-scale application, and proof of concept. Look at the technical difference between Celeron and Xeon. Then look at the price difference. You could put a Xeon in a desktop machine, and benefit, but the price made it not worth it. Granted, Itanium will have a big technical difference - PCs DO need to go 64 bit to be serious in the enterprise server market. But they need MUCH more than that - in a practical sense, less performance for more $? Crazy. That's market segmentation. A tool designed to artificially constrain supply in the marketplace, to drive up prices, while not suffering from constrained supply (and high costs) on the manufacturing end. The results? Pure profit. Bring lots of vaseline.
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http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-4236527.ht
Okay, so Intel is about to ship it's Itanium, and Microsoft doesn't have an OS to power the new architecture. But Linux is ready to support the new chip...
...hmmm. I just don't see a problem here.
Note the CNET in the URL. It means the the NY Times just reprinted CNET's Original Article...at least you don't have to sign up for regristration!
Doh!
However, having said that, the on the proven technology front it can only be good for Linux to be ahead - as then it gets the label of being proven sooner than MS Windows, which will be uppermost in IT managers minds.
If you ask me, the battle on this front will not be decide next year, but the year after, when the Itanium is expected to start pushing into the mainstream server market.
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KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
...because there's not exactly going to be an immediate, huge demand for a greatly overpriced, unproven processor that's incompatible with just about everything that's been built up in the PC-clone era of the last 19 years. Similarly, you can't run Windows 98 on a PowerPC or Alpha. Does it matter?
It remains to be seen if the Itanium is really where personal computing is headed. After all, Intel has introduced other non-x86 processors in the past and had very high hopes for them. The RISC i860 processor, introduced in 1989, is a good example. The successor, the i960 is still available. But these chips are outside the x86 realm, and there's reason to think that the Itanium could be as well. Moving to an entirely new processor *family*, not just the next generation of what's currently available, is not to be taken lightly. This is doubly true when the benefits of such a change are not at all obvious.