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Intel Reveals Itanium 2 Glitch
NeoChichiri writes "News.com is running on an article about glitches in Intel's Itanium 2 chips. Even though it doesn't affect all chips, they have still stopped shipments of the new 450 Servers until the problem is resolved. Apparently it has to be 'a specific set of operations in a specific sequence with specific data.' Intel is saying that affects the 900MHz and 1 GHz Itanium 2 chips and that it will not affect the upcoming 1.5 GHz Itanium 2 6M chips." Until the next iteration of chip arrives though, Oliver Wendell Jones writes, "they recommend working around the problem by underclocking the processor to run at 800 MHz instead of its default 900 MHz or 1 GHz."
The big problem is when something fails SILENTLY! That's what the BSOD and the Kernel oopsies are! If the system has corrupt data, it is very very bad, worse than losing data. So if the hardware has a bug, then it will pass corrupt data around, and then things fail.....google around for what happens with bad ram, and learn about HAppy Fun Bugs!
Fellowship 9/11
You really are a troll, tonight!
Please read "Sun suffers UltraSparc II cache crash headache [theregister.co.uk]"
This was a problem with the cache RAM and not the CPU itself. It was traced to a supplier (IBM), who was selling a defective product.
In terms of reliability, the Itanium II is no worse than the UltraSPARC series of chips.
There is no data to back this up. I know you don't have it, and I certainly don't have it. The only people who really have it (Intel and Sun) probably won't give it to us, so this ends here.
However, since so many people pay attention to the flaws in Intel chips, they are likely to have less bugs than other chips.
This is not true. Intel is pressured by a time-to-market more than other suppliers, especially with respect to the Pentium line. Sun has obviously decided to delay product launches to work out issues (e.g., UltraSPARC IIIi), because their customers expect reliability over other concerns. Hardware doesn't really follow the "all bugs are shallow" mantra of the Open Source movement, we mainly have to have faith in the manufacturer's simulation and test labs.
In any event, the performance of the Itanium II is at least 1 order of magnitude greater than the UltraSPARC III and (soon) IV.
Do you even know what "order of magnitude" means? You are claiming that, if the UltraSPARC III scores 975 on something that the Itanium II would score 9750??? For a given clock, it is true that the Itanium II is faster than the US III, but by a fraction--not a factor of ten!
Also, the US IV, by definition, will be almost twice as fast as the US III for throughput, because it is two US III chips in one.
You really don't know what the facts are.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.