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Intel Plans A Common Socket For Xeon, Itanium

Posted by timothy on from the common-ground dept.

stonedonkey writes "According to EE Times, Intel is planning a common system platform for the Xeon and Itanium by 2007, "creating a unified 64-bit motherboard with a new, one-size-fits-all socket." Intel's Jason Waxman says , "It has been something that customers have been asking us for for a while now...the reseller [currently] has to have an inventory of both boxes on hand." Feeling the heat from the competition, cutting losses, or just friendly customer service?"

6 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Not exactly new news... by halo1982 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Inquirer reported on something just like this nearly a year ago. Of course this is actually confirmed with a date, but the Inq still has a bit more information.

  2. Sounds like they're admitting defeat. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Something like this adds to the complexity of the system board. The odds are good that you'd only want to do this if the sales of one type of system were so poor, you'd prefer the increased complexity so you can gain increased economies of scale.

    Eg: how does a system bootstrap itself from power on to the point where the OS is loaded? That's the job of the code in the BIOS (or OpenBoot, or equivalent). Do you believe that x86-32 BIOS code is going to work to get an Itanium CPU loading the OS? The only way you'll get a generic BIOS to work is if there's an opcode that will allow a jump to a given address in one CPU, whilst just incrementing the instruction pointer on the other.

    Look at Athlon. The Athlon bus was designed so that you could, in theory, plug an Alpha into an Athlon board. How many boards were made available to do this? Zip (that I know of, anyway.)

    Intel are desperate to increase sales of Itanic (typo deliberate ;) -- they're hoping that by doing this, the economies of scale will make Itanic more appealing. Sorry, Intel; I'd say that this is the beginning of the end. Your fortunes were built on backwards compatibility, and it looks like that's now the millstone around your neck, dragging Itanium down.

  3. It's still not much better than a stop-gap... by NerveGas · · Score: 4, Interesting


    With Opterons coming in much less expensive than the Itaniums, moving to a common socket with the Xeons isn't going to help much.

    On the other hand, with Opterons offering far better scalability and performance than Xeons, moving to a common socket with Itaniums isn't going to help out much.

    Even on 2-way machines, Opterons show much better scalability than Xeons. As the number of CPUs increase, the Opteron architecture (when coupled with a supporting OS) allows it to shine more and more. With 8-way Opterons coming out fairly soon, Intel needs to come up with something fast - they're losing one of their most lucrative markets to AMD.

    steve

    --
    Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
  4. The beginning of the end for Itanium by shizzle · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I think this is a sign of Intel cutting its losses... this will certainly save money, but at the cost of being able to differentiate Itanium platforms from Xeon platforms. One of the real distinctions between a high-end platform and a run-of-the-mill machine is memory bandwidth; if both types of chips plug into the same socket, they're going to have access to the same bandwidth, and Itanium will lose one of its few remaining advantages over Xeon.

    Intel would only do this if saving money was more important to them than giving people a credible reason to buy Itaniums instead of Xeons... and I do believe that's the situation at this point in time. Not a good sign for the future of Itanium.

  5. Re:Interesting approach.... by Tim+C · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This means you need to change your motherboard everytime you switch from one socket to another - big expense and something that makes u think a lot about which socket u want.

    Well, I've had a PC for about 8 years now, and have upgraded a number of times. I don't recall ever keeping the same motherboard when buying a new processor.

    True, I imagine that if you buy them regularly, then you may well "reuse" a motherboard once or twice. But personally, by the time I need/can afford to upgrade, a new motherboard is a requirement if I want to obtain a decent performance increase. My old one simply won't support the newer chips.

    So, for people who do go to the trouble and expense of incremental upgrades, yes, I can see that not having to buy a new motherboard may be a factor. But I think probably the majority of people leave it long enough between upgrades that keeping the same one simply isn't an option. YM, of course, MV.

    --
    It's official. Most of you are morons.
  6. Re:Common socket, gmpf! by dpilot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    (sorry to add a serious comment to a joke)

    The sockets diverged back in the days of Slot1. Intel didn't want to compete on the socket level, like back in the Socket7 days, so they tied things up in patents and such. That's what drove AMD to the SlotA, which they got from Alpha. Theoretically you could have motherboards into which you could put either a K7 or an Alpha, by changing the BIOS.

    Actually, that same trick seems to be what Intel is trying to pull, here. But what seems and what is may be two different things. With today's market positioning, Xeon and Itanium are sold into different markets, and those markets would drive radically different types of boards.

    So we have four possibilities:
    1: Intel is trying to enable Itanium to creep downward into the Xeon market.
    2: Intel is trying to enable Xeon to creep upward into the Itanium market.
    3: Intel is confused, and trying to hedge their bets.
    4: Beancounter have gained some ascendancy over the marketdroids, and have gotten fed up with the costs of 'socket differentiation.'

    --
    The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.