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Inside the Itanium

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hammer-time dept.

vanguard writes: "Extreme Tech has a detailed overview of the Itanium. It's fairly long but it's worth your time if such things interest you."

1 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Overview? How about Autopsy... by HiredMan · · Score: 4, Informative

    HP decided as early as 1996 that the then "Merced" project would not overtake their PA-RISC arch and essentially walked away from the the project.

    Years late the "Itanium" finally ships (although no one buys it) as Intel says, "But wait for McKinley! Then it will really work!"

    The McKinley is the product of the "rethought" Merced project. McKinley is shipping later this year - with a completely different socket system so even the arch surrounding the "Itanium" is dead in the water.

    Let's compare this to the REAL competition:

    IBM Power4 1.3GHz - shipping for a while now:
    SPECint2000 = 814 SPECint_base2000 = 790
    SPECfp2000 = 1169 SPECfp_base2000 = 1098

    Sun UltraSparc III Cu 1.05GHz:
    SPECint2000 = 610 SPECint_base2000 = 537
    SPECfp2000 = 827 SPECfp_base2000 = 701

    Even the best Itanium 800Mhz reported int numbers are:
    SPECint2000 = 365 SPECint_base2000 = 358
    (Same box) SPECfp2000 = 610 SPECfp_base2000 = 526

    Even if the McKinley (which doesn't ship for 6 months or so) produces double the Itanium numbers it'll still lag the currently shipping Power4 chips.

    Remember the hype and FUD surrounding the launch of the "Itanium" chip that eventually hasn't even caused a ripple in the marketplace? Intel has sunk billions into this EPIC project and refuses to let it go even though it's years late so far hasn't produced the clear advantage over the RISC arch it was supposed to make obsolete. In many cases the "consumer" chips continue to make better results than the "server" chip series - and with AMD knocking on Intel's door throttling back production/performance of the consumer ship is not an option.

    Will the McKinley better than the Itanium? Certainly.
    Will it be compelling? Wihtout Intel behind it - probably not. (Alpha was the clear performance winner for so long but couldn't get any traction.)
    Is VLIW^H^H^H^H EPIC the future of computing? "Answer unclear... ask again later." ;)

    =tkk

    --
    Bill Gates - Creationist?!?