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Itanium Problems
webdev writes "An article in today's NYTimes (free but...) highlights some industry concerns over Itanium. The author suggests the normal "what's bad for Intel is bad for the computer industry". Anyone know the power consumption for IBM's 64 bit effort GPUL?"
"It has taken an entire decade, an estimated $5 billion and teams of hundreds of engineers from the two companies to bring the first Itanium chip to market. As the struggles and costs mount for the companies, skeptical technologists say Itanium now has the hallmarks of a bloated project in deep trouble. It is already four years behind schedule, emerging just as companies are in no mood to spend money on technology"
Skeptical? More like, forget it Chachi, it ain't happening.
I guess the larger companies don't get it. Corporations are struggling. Companies are in holding patterns, waiting for the mess, erm, economy, to level off.
Can I have a job now making millions being a skeptical technologist?
Sent from your iPad.
I just read a story on msnbc.com about AMD's 64bit processor, I close the window, check slashdot and there is the story about Intels Itanium. Anyway here is the link for msnbc. http://www.msnbc.com/news/813950.asp?0si=-
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
"Every big computing disaster has come from taking too many ideas and putting them in one place, and the Itanium is exactly that," said Gordon Bell, a veteran computer designer and a Microsoft researcher."
He should follow that up by saying, "Here at Microsoft we have proved this time and time again."
http://www.hp.com/products1/itanium/performance/ar chitecture/speccpu.html
-Kevin
AMD's x86-64 architecture will allow companies to upgrade individual parts of their software systems to 64-bit without having to replace everything else. That's the key to AMD's future success; it makes the migration path to 64-bit that much easier (and that much cheaper).
Itanium flopped before; chances are good it will flop again.
The IBM 64-bit processor is reported to be much lower power than the Power 4 chip it is derived from, and the actual chip is rougly the size of the Intel Celeron. See article.
Only if you try to overclock it.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
We've ported chemistry simulation code to the pre-release ITA-2, and run benchmarks. There's not much like it, performance-wise, and on a cycle/dollar scale, it's in a class by itself. Smokes US-IIIs, walks away from the Alpha, and keeps pace handily with the Power4, at a more academicly-tolerable price. It's a good chip in its second incarnation, and has the misfortune to be introduced during a recession.
As always, the NYT ignored that you'll need the 64-bit address space for large applications, it has excellent memory bandwidth, and those customers requiring such a system weren't explicitly interviewed or mentioned. The heat issue is true, and that's it's one failing, but as with the Alpha, it will get better in time. (I still remember the rumors, pre-release of the Alpha that DEC was going to have to build a liquid-cooled workstation)
...can you imagine a beowulf cluster of these?
In fact, I know from a reliable source that tomorrow the president of the USA is going to reveal that the Iraqi army has managed to get hold of 2000 Itanium chips and is threatening to turn them all on and melt the Earth.
RMN
~~~
GCC already supports the Itanium and Intel has great code they could give to GCC in terms of optomization (Intel doesn't make money in the compiler business).
Wrong... Intel IS in the compiler business: they have their own compiler called "icc". They could give code to GCC, but they won't because it'll hurt their icc business. You'd think they'd be smart and release their optimizations to GCC to help their processors perform better, but Intel doesn't think this way. They want you to believe their slick marketing that their processors really are better, AND they want you to shell out for their compiler (which may or may not actually get those processors to perform well--you won't know until you pay up and try it out). Of course, how does this help all of us who use open-source software (which includes Google mentioned in this article), compiled by GCC? It doesn't.
Saddest sentence in the whole article:
"There are other benefits for Hewlett-Packard. The Itanium allows the company to eliminate both of its current 64-bit chips -- the H.P. PA-RISC and Compaq Alpha. That alone should save the company $200 million to $400 million annually in development and manufacturing costs, according to Steven M. Milunovich, an analyst at Merrill Lynch."
Yeah, HP and Compaq have been fine stewards of their engineering legacy...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Dynamic optimization is not restricted to hardware. Java Hotspot will do well with Itanium (if Sun survives), and I believe Smalltalk and LISP have dynamic optimization as well. The way I see it, Virtual Machines are the future of high performance computing. And yes, .NET is important for Microsoft to prosper in the non-IA32 world. (Although I hate it when the wicked prosper.)