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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?"

2 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.