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Intel's Itanium 2: Succeed or Fail?
An anonymous reader writes "'Intel's most powerful processor ever has the ability to take on IBM, sink Sun, make or break HP, and crush or revive AMD,' says Fortune's David Kirkpatrick. But the 64-bit question is what happens to the heavyweight competition if Itanium 2 succeeds or fails?"
Yeah, if intel's new chip is a hit then the company will profit more. In other news if intell gains market shares then AMD will not have those same market shares.....i should be an econmic analyist.
As Intel now loses its backwards compatibility, they also lose their biggest advantage. Sadly, the IA64 will probably lose out to less spectacular, but IA32 compatible designs.
Alpha tried to emulate the x86 earlier and failed. Sadly.
Wait..I have heard that before....
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Am I alone in feeling the Really Big Question is how much the Opteron costs? They've pretty much said the Athlon64 has to wait another quarter. So then, the "desktop" just has to wait, and its success really depends on the buzz the industry gives from the introduction of the Opteron.
But I just don't see much buzz coming from the Opteron, unless they capture the hearts and imaginations of that "Workstation" market they throw right in there with the "Server" market in their roadmaps. And quite simply, to do that, they still need to keep costs really low. Slightly more expensive than the Pentium 4, but WAY below the 2nd mortgage Itanium II.
Personally, the second i find out how much the Opteron ships for, I'll make a decision on buying stock in AMD for a long term investment. If they drop the ball on this one, their new "away from chip making" strategy doesn't inspire much confidence in this investor.
I've worked on 64-bit conversion projects for applications on HP-Unix, and it tends not be as trivial as it should be. I'd compare it to converting a 16 bit Windows app to 32-bit Windows. Yes, both should be trivial, but there are enough gotchas! On a per line of code, the Windows conversion was probably more involved, but then that was because it wasn't written as well - eg. assuming an "int" is 16 bits long.
RB
Um, Windows already runs on 64-bit hardware. If programmers use the typedef'd types instead of hardcoding pointer sizes, then the port should involve little more than a recompile.
The transition to Win32 was painful enough that the newer APIs are all written so as to make the next transition seamless. There may yet be a valuable crystal waiting inside the lodestone.
The proper plural of "Itanium" is probably Itania. HTH.
Itanium/2 is a 64 bit processor. So it needs 64 bit software, including the OS.
Umm, no. For example I am running 32-bit Solaris on a 64-bit UltraSPARC. And applications compiled 32-bit.
Whereas in the case of Windoze, the 32 bit stuff (and even some 16 bit stuff) is built right in to the API.
Yes, that's why it's called the Win32 API. Work is well under way on Win64, but in Microsoft's ideal world, almost no-one will write to the Win64 API - they'll target the CLR, which itself will be 64-bit native.
Then the millions of apps that people use, right now an excellent way to lock customers in, are going to turn into a lodestone around their necks.
Yes, just like when Apple moved from 68k to PPC? Nope, wasn't a problem.
I'm sure Micro$oft is pissed as hell, but Linux is going to take a huge upswing when Itaniums start flying off the shelves.
That doesn't necessarily follow either. After all, Win 3.11 didn't fully exploit the 80386 either, and it wasn't 'til the first NT that Microsoft did.
this reminds me of what Apple had to do (and get developers to do) when they were moving from the 680x0 chips to the PowerPC chips - it wasn't until Apple jumped to OS X that they had a truly 100% PPC Native OS. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft handels this transition.
Ignorance is the Agent of Fear; Fear Is the Agent of Violence - >1
It's already happening, you just haven't noticed it yet.
Jon.
I think the author has it backwards. He says if the new chip fails then blah. However, the more coherent argument is that if blah happens, then Intel's new chip has failed.
But, the author doesn't seem to realize that there's more than just out and out success or failure on the spectrum. It's more likely that there will be incremental change. Intel sells X units to A, B, and C, AMD sells Y to D, E, and F, and IBM, SUN, and co. sell to whomever. And things kinda ballance out.
All this new technology that's supposed to change everything dramatically, changes things to the degree that it's touted to. My money is still on evolution rather than revolution.
In mathematics, one does not understand things, one merely gets used to them.
--VonNeumann
Is it possible to have a motherboard with two processors, a P4 and an Itanium? The core OS could run on the Itanium and non-Itanium stuff could get executed on the P4 processor(s).
I'm sure this is a stupid idea that many other posters will point out the weaknesses of, but I'm wondering why it couldn't be done.
Plus, less power consumption could mean thousands or tens of thousands depending how many servers you have. If you're google or some other huge site with thousands of systems, the power savings means lower operation overhead.
Well, the trend broke in 2001 when people started to notice that the machines needed for this generation of software was not the fastest but the slowest machines on the market. That most users did not need a top end machine and instead could buy the slowest processor out there. During 2002, the same came true for lap tops. Now everyone is swimming in so much wasted CPU power that it is going to finally crush those that can't adapt to radically lower needs compared to what Intel and their competitors are churning out. Ask someone who runs a computer room and they will tell you that they are quickly consolidating old servers that cost $250K three years ago to a server that costs $15K and only takes up a quarter of the room.
Intel is in real danger of not surviving because it does not understand where we will be in 5 years. 5 years ago when they were in the middle of this effort they did not see our need for speed slowing dramticly and are now producing a chip that has such a limited market that it will never be profitable with all the investment that was in put in.
When you look at how a company responds to the typical S curve of development, they may make the first curve but often that screws up their timing on the second curve and they just go off the cliff.
NT Alpha is both a 32Bit version and has been EOL'd (Although it lasted longer than NT PPC).
Windows 64 is due out Real Soon now, and it's delay is likely at least half the reason the Athlon 64 has been pushed back.
Itanium 2 is going to have to make up for the pathetic performance of the first revision (Which seems to perform on par with a Via C3)
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
It is something of a question whether this change will open up opportunities for new software. I think it will. Think shared memory -- very large memory spaces being simultaneously updated and accessed by multiple independent processes and processors performing different tasks possibly for different users. The three drivers of technology are corporate databases, games, and pornography. Huge memory spaces with multiple processors attached have many possible breathtaking applications in each of these domains. Start coding.
The article doesn't really touch on why intel is so buddy-buddy with Linux (they've helped refine GCC and other important issues).
linux will always be best on intel CPUs, because they are the most available. linux is taking over proprietary UNIX boxes by Sun, HP, and SGI.
guess what, all those UNIX boxes used to have high-performance CPUs attached to them (MIPS, PA-RISC, etc). Now they are all going the way of the dino...thanks to Linux.
the more popular Linux is in the server room, the more likely Intel will be riding its coattails. And yes I know that Linux exists for other archs, but Linux/SPARC, Linux/PPC etc are always a step behind the Intel version.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
I think the success of the Itanium not only rests on its technical merits but more importantly it rests with how much mindshare they can get for the product with the business people who, more often than not, end up making technical decision in a void.
I think that Intel is aware of this. Marketing can make the product. The best engineered solution does not always win out.
...Sigh here we go:
First, it's too hot and too expensive.
The people who buy these things know this and can deal with it. Remember, these are not crammed in like Mini-ATX towers (like the one under your desk). They're deployed by professionals in a professional environment with standards for this stuff.
Secondly is doesn't have any applications. I don't mean Gnome and KDE, I mean the sort of applications that big corporations run.
Big Corporations can and will port their existing (probably already 64-bit) applications to Itanium to take advantage of the newer / faster platform. ISVs are already porting applications to it and have been for a while.
Thirdly it isn't backwards-compatible with any existing architectures. You can't just take your binaries over and run them, at least not at full speed. Applications will need to be ported and retested. This is not insignificant in time, effort and cost.
See above. Porting will and has happened. If the logic can be presented that the company will either save or gain money by upgrading to this hardware then it will happen. It just makes business sense.
Fourthly, most people who want 64-bit in the corporate world already have it in the form of SPARC, Power, PA RISC and Alpha. Why should they change to an unproven, immature "jam tomorrow" architecture given their working and reliable systems already in use?
When the systems already in use are cost prohibitive to maintain they will be abandoned. A smart company will see the trend and start migration early. The Sparc platform is dated and loosing it's performance edge very quickly. The IBM Power series is still a reasonable choice. PA RISC who? Alpha who? You need to understand that IT departments invest for the long-haul, you won't see too many more shiney new Alphas being purchased not because they're bad but because C[T|I]Os know they're a doomed platform.
I'm afraid intel missed the boat by about 10 years. If they'd brought out a 64-bit RISC at the same time as SPARC, MIPS, Alpha and Power they might have stood a chance.
Or they could be going under like so many of the platforms you just mentioned. The 64bit world is certainly not new but it definitly requires some re-thinking in todays world. Intel is in a great position to do that.
I don't even need to mention how Athlon 64/Opteron will eat its lunch in the commodity sector of the market.
You don't need to say it because you can't say it. At least not yet. I too doubt that Itanium will be a hugh smash in the commodity arena. Not because it's inferior (I'm not arguing that either way) but because the money isn't there.
The companies that need and use 64-bit applications will not want those applications running on commodity hardware. They'll want a well supported platform and one that works time and again. Itanium can provide this. IBM can provide this. AMD cannot - they don't even make their own motherboards for christ sake.
Frankly, once a company has enough business to justify a 64bit platform they'll probably be profitable enough to deplay a good one - not the one from CompUSA.
Is it just me, or has there been really no mention of the Itanium on a "consumer" desktop? It sort of mirrors the "Pentium Pro" situation of numerous years back...it was pitched as a server-and-datacenter processor, but it was years before it became the Pentium II. On the other hand, AMD's Opteron/Athlon 64 has been touted as a consumer piece from the very start. The consumer and "business" processors have been developed side-by-side, and their release dates are rather close. Is AMD the smarter or the dunce here? Time will tell. I, for one, am putting off any personal computer upgrades until 6 months or so after the A64 comes out.
Sun are still scheduled to release the UltraSPARC-IV this year (at last report) which will be dual-core (same as Power4) and might again leapfrog IBM for a while.
Sun aren't doing that badly, all things considered, given the current state of the economy. We'll see how things pan out over the next few years, but it's too early to say Sun/SPARC is dying.
There's another little-considered thing about IA-64: It's the most proprietary major CPU on the market. AFAIK, every one of the major CPUs has some form of cross-licensing or functional cloning in place, except IA-64. (Actually, I don't know about HPPA, but I'm sure there's some cross-licensing of technology through HP's IP agreements.)
It's not because of market positioning, either. It's not something that will come on as soon as IA-64 succeeds.
It's because Intel and HP set up a company specifically to hold the IP of IA-64. Intel and HP don't hold any IA-64 IP themselves, they get it from this company. That way, the IA-64 IP is not covered by any agreements of Intel or HP, either.
This is no guarantee that 100% private IP is evil. Nor is it a guarantee that it won't be licensed in the future. Nor is it a guarantee that Intel and HP won't come at each others' throats with a price war. But it's a degree of lock-in that should be a factor in any decision.
This issue isn't mentioned in either article.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The main problem is that the theory sounds good, but the reality shows a LOT of problems. The Itanium is a VLIW processor, which is quite different from the more traditional RISC and CISC designs of other chips. The idea is rather similar to the difference between RISC and CISC (which, these days, are more or less the same thing), move more of the optimizations into the compiler to make the chip design more simple, thereby allowing more money to be spent on fatter pipes, bigger caches, etc. for the chip.
The problem though, is that it's often EXTREMELY difficult for compilers to effectively optimize software for VLIW chips. Since the Itanium has no out-of-order execution or branch prediction, these things have to be done entirely at compile time. The compiler needs to organize the software so that the chip is constantly being fed with data rather than having the chip dynamically rearrange some instructions if others are sitting waiting for data. It also needs to include it's own concept of branch prediction, suggesting which branch is more likely to occur. What's even worse (and which I rarely see mentioned) is that it has to optimize it's software for a particular chip design rather than an architecture, ie Itanium software needs to be recompiled for the Itanium2 in order to see many of the benefits of the new chip.
As far as manufacturing goes, that's comparatively easy for Intel at least. There they just have to put up with a huge die and extremely high power consumption. Not exactly a cheap chip to manufacturer, but manufacturing chips has always been Intel's specialty. Also, the high selling price of the Itanium means that Intel can afford quite a bit of leeway.
Anyway, long story short, the big problem with the Itanium/IA64 in general is that it's a design that is VERY difficult to optimize code for. It requires a very good compiler to begin with, but even then there are simpily some optimizations that just can't be done at compile time, and those situations will hurt the performance of the IA64 chips a lot. If Spec CPU2000 scores are anything to go by, the things from CINT (ie databases, compression, FPGA design, compilers, etc.) are much harder to optimize for IA64 than CFP (mostly scientific computing applications).
Actually, I don't mind the idea of breaking X86 compatibility - I just object to breaking it for IA-64. IA-64 was conceived in a time when it was felt that Out Of Order (OOO) execution was going to be too tough a nut to crack.
In less time than Intel and HP took to go off and crack the VLIW/EPIC problems, other design teams learned to handle OOO, and do a very good job of it. They appear to have succeeded, and have a leading-edge part - but at what cost. AFAIK, the IA-64 is the most expensive CPU ever made.
The latest-out CPU usually does seem to hold the performance crown. But IA-64 doesn't seem to hold it that solidly, and there's question about whether the latest Alpha iterations have been allowed to fully appear - for fear of embarassment.
IA-64 looks almost like a government project gone wild. It has produced results, but IMHO horribly inefficiently. Pushing a more reasonable (not necessarily more conventional) architecture might well have yielded better results.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Don't be so quick to predict the demise of Itanium. I would question your analysis based on past history of Intel products.
1. Heat - has been an issue since the 8087 and lower power products or improvements in heat removal technology have continuously become available. Even in current Itanium/Itanium 2 (Itanium Processor Family - IPF) products, heat is an issue but not one that is preventing IPF products from shipping. Over time you will see a significant reduction in dissipation in Deerfield/Monticito (SP?) but, in any case, solutions to the heat issue are becoming available.
2. Cost - Intel products are only expensive while customers are willing to pay high prices for them. Any time Intel has had competitive pressures, they have been able to drop the price to meet the new price point OR introduce new products that allow them to maintain their margins.
3. Nobody seems to understand that there is an IA-32 processor core built into the chips (starting with McKinley (Itanium 2)). For backwards compatibility, it's really an operating system issue more than a hardware/software emulator issue. When the operating systems are properly implemented, IPF will be able to run 32-bit IA-32 applications concurrently with 64-bit IPF applications. When Linux supports this, I think you'll see interest in Hammer wane.
4. I would disagree with your comments on the people who want 64-bit already have them. I would not disagree that there are limited projects testing out different 64-bit architectures, but I would be very surprised at there being any large server farms out there with the latest incantations of Power or Alpha and the SPARC/MIPS are probably looking for an upgrade.
5. Itanium is ideally suited for Linux. I agree with your comments with regards to Windows - but when you are upgrading to a new Linux release don't you rebuild/retest the application to make sure it still runs? In our Linux systems we have been able to port directly from IA-32 to IPF without any changes to application software.
I believe that there is a lot of opportunity in the market for a "standard" 64-bit processor and this is what IPF is designed for. IPF may not be the best or the first but they do have the track record in taking over a market and maintaining it. Nobody has made a lot of money betting against Intel and nobody has ever gotten fired for choosing their products.
One of those sheep, sadly enough, is Shawn Robison, the CTO of HP. Mike Capellas brought him onboard at Compaq, whereupon he shoved aside all of the technical gurus from Digital, and then brought him over to HP and left him to continue to kiss Bill Gates' ass (and Steve Ballmer's) after Curly was lured away to eviscerate Worldcom. Robison is well-known as a Wintel Weenie - he thinks that Windows will ultimately rule the world and he wants it that way. He absolutely hates Unix in any form, be it Tru64 UNIX or HP-UX. The problem is, his high-end customers, the few that he has left, know better and continue to insist on high-end Unix systems. It doesn't take much analysis to figure out who some of the early non-commercial customers are for Marvel and the other associated products.
It is interesting that HP's Longview, Colorado labs developed Itanium2, and did so untainted by association with the Alpha Development Team, which was sold/indentured to Intel. It remains to be seen if Intel will be smart enough to merge all of the technology that they've stolen, er "bought", over the last few years, and be able to field a saleable product.
As for the heat dissipation, etc., well, that's been a laughable issue for many, many years, and won't change. It should be fairly obvious that the more transistors you cram into a single die, the more heat you're likely to need to dissipate. Intel laughed at Digital's initial Alpha chips because they did indeed dissipate more heat than the '486 chips shipping at the time. By the time Intel had fabricated a few Pentiums (at 60 and 66 MHz, for the software developers to have a realistic platform to use to port their software), Digital had built another generation of EV4's, at a higher speed and about the same heat, by lowering the voltage. Intel finally looked over their shoulder at Digital, and realized that they (I) simply couldn't continue to build complex microprocessors with a 5V Vcc, and started reducing the voltage. Of course, when Intel did all that, it became _acceptable_ to have a large heatsink and fan in one's computer. The fact is that Intel copied a great deal of what Digital pioneered and then made it look like they'd invented it.
As far as I'm concerned, Intel's plagarism and unethical business practices rank in the same cesspool as Microsoft's. Unfortunately, as long as there are assholes like Robison in positions of authority (yeah, Cartman comes to mind), the rest of the industry will suffer for it.
I run Linux on an SMP Athlon (2xMP1800+) for those reasons, and many others.
There are chips out that come close. The new C3 processors (VIA) run at 1 gigahertz. They also use 15 volts of power and dissipate under 10 watts of heat. And then there's VIAs Eden, which is an embedded processor platform (yes, it will run linux) that runs up to 1 gigahertz, IIRC. And according to them, it uses up to 1.2 volts and dissipates up to 6 watts of heat. And that's less than 1/10th.
And it's not only about power consumption. A lot of people have gotten sick of machines that sound like lawnmowers, and are going to the quiet side. Quiet is the new Overclock. You now can have a 2 gigahertz machine that only puts out 20 decibels of noise at 1 foot.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
> The companies that need and use 64-bit applications will not want those
> applications running on commodity hardware. They'll want a well supported
> platform and one that works time and again.
That's certainly the conventional wisdom, but I'm not so sure if it applies in the near-to-long-term future. There's a great article in the Feb 03 issue of Red Herring that tangentially applies... they talk about the trend of companies to just buy farms of cheaper, redundant servers built from commodity hardware, instead of the behemoth workhorses of old... they mention Google, which is typically a bellwether for other large online operations.
From a practical standpoint, why buy (and upkeep) a service contract with Sun or IBM when you can get 40 P4's or Athlons running FreeBSD for similar cost and replace them with parts from CompUSA at your leisure as they fail ?
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I still think that's true. Windows on Itanium is a terrible value proposition -- almost nothing will be native for years and years to come, and x86 execution mode is way way too slow to be cost effective. I think we'll see very little Windows on Itanium.
OTOH, Itanium is virtually ideal for vendors moving from proprietary chips/UNIXen to Linux. I was still fairly skeptical about Linux' chances back then, but I'm not anymore. Linux on Itanium is going to be a smash hit and will dominate the datacenter.
Windows on servers is ... iffy. I see the possibility that AMD's x86-64 will be a hit in that market, but you'd have thought Athlon would be interesting too and it was completely ignored. Then again it's Microsoft's only real chance in the large server market so you can count on them pushing it really hard. If they succeed then expect an Itanium with a much improved x86 execution mode; I don't think Intel will go the extended-x86 route. If AMD does not succeed then Windows is going to be pigeonholed as a small server.
Regarding other chips, only POWER looks set to survive/thrive, but only in traditional IBM environments. Sun is in the middle of a financial collapse; I would be surprised if we see more than one additional generation of SPARC technology from them. Fujitsu has a nice SPARC, years ahead of Sun, but SPARC stuff is such a bad value proposition these days that it and Sun are going to die fast.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
Not all apps can be run on clusters of cheapo Intel! Who's *actually* running Oracle RAC on Lintel, really? Who, apart from Google, runs a set up like Google?
For example, if you're a Sun customer, like and use Solaris, you buy the low cost Sun boxes for the front end and rely on warranty for your maintenance needs. When you have an app that benefits from larger SMP boxes, you buy the larger SMP boxes and maybe rely on warranty if they're horizontally scalable apps, like say, app servers, running on 480s or v880s for example.
On your really large SMP apps, campus clusters, massive server consolidations, mainframe replacement F15Ks and the like, you buy a service contract.
Cheap Intel hardware isn't some amazing panacea that's going to replace large machines. Theres's also the cost of managing all those small boxes to take into account. A couple of reliable and available SMP Unix boxes can well be more cost effective than lots of little boxes.
I don't see how a new processor from Intel, or anybody else for that matter, is going to cause "serious competition" for any vendor such as HP, IBM, or Sun. When choosing a solution, IT doesn't go for Sun because its run on a Sparc CPU. They don't choose IBM because it runs a PowerPC. I give up on why they choose HP. :)
The point is, the CPU is just 1 little part in a solution. Intel isn't going to do any damage to these vendors unless they supply the entire solution, which isn't their business! To think otherwise is pretty dumb and a bunch of PR bullshit attempting to inflate Intel's stock value.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Itanium is NOT ideally suitable for Linux.
The compiler requirements for Itanium are simply too high. Unless the GCC team has gotten some SERIOUS assistance from Intel, I would not expect the Itanium version of gcc to be good enough.
The real problem with Itanium is that it requires a remarkably better compiler.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.