Microsoft Dropping Itanium Support For Clusters

Itanium is Linux bound by Thaidog · 2004-11-11 22:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

The only place I see the Itaniums making it anywhere is SGI. They're using them for all their supercomputers running linux. Let's hope they keep the mips line... just in case ;)

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Re:Itanium is Linux bound by EyeSavant · 2004-11-11 22:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

MIPS is dead.

SGI are pretty much commited to moving everyone to Itanic, they are only selling MIPS stuff to people who REALLY REALLY want backward compatability. MIPS chips are not going to get much faster, they are not going to bring out a proper new generation, most of the improvements are going to be from shrinking the gates on the chips.

Making a chip costs a stupidly big amount of money, and MIPS does not have the volume to justify it.

If Itanic sinks (really sorry) then SGI will eventually be bought up by IBM for their shared memory tech, and customer roladex.

SGI have bet the company on Itanic
Re:Itanium is Linux bound by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-11 23:35 · Score: 4, Interesting

SGI has bet the company no more on Itanium than HP has. Sure, they'd rather stick to their current line of IA64-based products for a little while, but if Itanium dies, SGI can still move to another chip. No doubt the costs would be significant, but I wouldn't expect it to be so bad that SGI would go belly up over it.

Why?

Because their core technology seems to be relatively independent of the CPU. The Altix line really just builds on the Origin line. It's the connections between machines (NUMAflex), and their understanding of high-performance computing in general, that will keep them afloat.

What's more interesting is, what would they move to iff IA64 would be discontinued (which is still very unlikely, but let's assume it does)? AMD64 is an option, Cray are showing it works well with their RedStorm machines. Or perhaps SGI can find an ally in IBM with their POWER chips. The latter is IMO more likely because SGI is a firm believer in RISC, and when IA64 is dead, POWER is the last in the line of RISC chips with competitive performance. Or perhaps they can revive their MIPS based lines.

What's actually more interesting is, what is HP going to do when more vendors move away from IA64 and they risk ending up being the only ones selling them???

The correct response: So what? by Dancin_Santa · 2004-11-11 22:38 · Score: 5, Interesting

Does Microsoft's dropping of the Itanium from it's supported platform list herald the end of Itanium? No. In fact, Microsoft wasn't even the first to drop it, rather HP was the first to go ahead and stop using it in its high end servers. The whole thing boils down to the cost/benefit ratio which is insanely high for Itanium-based machines.

So Intel now gets a boost to its Xeon line of chips which are leading the high-performance server market percentage-wise. With this, Intel can put more effort into ramping Xeon production and subsequently driving the prices down there, and likewise continue producing the superfast Itaniums in servers running Linux or some other proprietary supercomputer operating system.

The demand for supercomputers is low. It will always be low. As technology progresses, the normal users like us get to reap the rewards of this high technology and eventually those supercomputers will be available to us on a single board. The supercomputers of that future will be supersupercomputers and the demand will still be small.

So let the Itanium fit its niche in the super-highend market. Let the Xeons fill in the normal server market. And let Microsoft stay out of the supercomputer market where it simply doesn't fit.

Re:The correct response: So what? by bani · 2004-11-11 23:01 · Score: 5, Insightful

The problem here is that intel is sinking billions into itanic, its a black hole for money and intel keeps throwing more money into it trying to save face.

itanium has not delivered on a single design goal since its inception. intel went full steam ahead on itanium, placing bets on a number of key technologies to pan out in order to sustain itanium development -- all of which never happened.

so now intel is stuck with an incomplete chip with projected market share shrinking, support drying up, and partners abandoning ship.

intel continues to sink huge sums of money into itanium on an incredibly tiny niche market, which would be better spent investing on developing technology for their core markets. right now amd is eating them for lunch with amd64.

Makes economic sense by gilesjuk · 2004-11-11 22:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

Itanium is too small a market for Microsoft to devote developer time to. They're better off getting longhorn ready than supporting an already dead platform. Itantium will go the way of the Pentium Pro, another hyped up CPU that never really delivered.

Seems like the Wintel alliance isn't so strong these days. Microsoft opting for IBM's PPC processor for XBox 2 is another example of how they're looking what hardware is best for the job, instead of what their traditional partners can offer.

Re:Makes economic sense by Paul+Jakma · 2004-11-11 23:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

Pentium Pro, another hyped up CPU that never really delivered.

Hang on, you are joking, right?

PPro has probably been Intel's best chip architecture to date. The initial P6 had bad 16bit performance, which made it a bad choice for consumers are that time, but it was very competitive in normal 32bit mode, idea for NT, Linux and other PC Unixen. The 2nd iteration of the P6 architecture fixed the 16bit issue and was enormously successful. The latest iteration of that arch (Pentium-M) is quietly outperforming the architecture designed to replace it, the P4, at nearly half the clock speed and far less power usage. Indeed, it looks like Intel will be going *back* to the P6 family in future as its 'frontline' PC architecture.

So you must be joking.

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Re:Makes economic sense by Lonewolf666 · 2004-11-12 00:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

The initial P6 had bad 16bit performance, which made it a bad choice for consumers are that time, but it was very competitive in normal 32bit mode, idea for NT, Linux and other PC Unixen. The 2nd iteration of the P6 architecture fixed the 16bit issue and was enormously successful.
Sorry, wrong on the 16bit issue. The 2nd iteration of the P6 architecture, aka Pentium III, still sucked with 16 bit software. It was saved by the introduction of 32bit software and a (mostly) 32 bit OS.

I remember a software project I was working on in 1998, where we still used Delphi 1 (16bit) because the customer still had a Win3.11 environment.

When we ran that program side-by-side on a Pentium MMX with 200MHz and a Pentium III with 450 MHz, the old Pentium MMX was roughly twice as fast.

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C - the footgun of programming languages

Windows Supercomputer? by ortcutt · 2004-11-11 22:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

Does anyone want a Windows Supercomputer anyway? Does Microsoft really think they have a chance in this sector considering how entrenched *nix is?

Re:Windows Supercomputer? by pchan- · 2004-11-11 23:56 · Score: 4, Funny

Does anyone want a Windows Supercomputer anyway?

i don't know about you guys, but the first thing i look for in a supercomputer is an easy to use graphical user interface. who wants to spend all that time typing archaic commands into their supercomputer's commandline? i just put NumberCrunch.exe on my desktop, and doubleclick it when i'm ready to launch. and all of my computations are stored on my shared folder, so that the other nodes can see what i've done and add their results. and while my program is running in the background i can also browse the web or play a little doom 3 (you would not believe the frame rates i get). but remember, turn off your screensavers if you want your supercomputer to reach its full power, because that opengl flying windows thing takes up alot of cpu time.

Re:dammit by luvirini · 2004-11-11 23:02 · Score: 4, Funny

BTW, is the name really "Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition"? Sounds terrible...

Oh, I am sure the developers wanted to call it Windows Server 2003 CCF (Complete Cluster F***) but the marketing people stepped in... Changing the name to Windows Server 2003 CCE

Re:Future by turgid · 2004-11-11 23:07 · Score: 5, Interesting

The Itanium was built for a niche market.

No it wasn't. Intel developed to itanic as a "post-RISC" design to crush all the 64-bir RISC processors, and to take over the workstation and server market. It was designed to be _the_ volume 64-bit processor with spectacular performance and low price due to economies of scale.

Those of us with a passing interest in microprocessors knew it was a turkey.

The only thing itanic has going for it is high SPEC FP scores. On everything else it is either poor or mediocre. It is hot, power-hungry, expensive, have virtually no software support, no developer community etc.

If you look closely at the "benchmark" comparisons that HP and intel put out for public consumption, you will see they usually only compare with very old models from competitors. Also notice the kind of workloads they compare and the configuration of the machines.

SGI recently might have given NASA a free itanic supercomputer if the rumours are true, accounting for a whole 10% of this years itanic shipments. That sounds like a processor in trouble.

Itanic was a solution looking for a problem. It was based on out-dated ideas of processr design, it was late, over-engineered and basically a damp squib for all but the handful of people who can afford it for numbercrunching. This is a far cry from the de-facto 64-bit, mass-market, low-cost processor with world domination that intel intended for it to be.

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Stick Men

Re:Future by EyeSavant · 2004-11-11 23:23 · Score: 5, Interesting

The only thing itanic has going for it is high SPEC FP scores. On everything else it is either poor or mediocre.

I have to second that. My feeling on it is when they had a meeting with a blank piece of paper to design this chip they only invited hardware people. All the tough stuff has been moved into software.

I think the lack of out of order execution really hirts them. If you don't do an amazing job with the compiler then the processor moves like a slug. In the supercomputer centre I used to use they "upgraded" their 512 processor MIPS machine by adding a 400 processor (or so) Itanic box. For a lot of things without extra optimization of the source code (i.e. just compìling the thing, assuming you could get it to compile, but that is another story) the Itaniums were SLOWER than the 3 year old MIPS processors. It takes a lot of tweaking to get anything like peak performance

There are 3 FPU pipleines that you have to fill at compile time to get maximum performace out of the thing. Identifying THREE parallel instructions at compile time, ALL THE TIME, is damn hard, and normally the compilers fail. Hence slow.

It is just too hard to get anything like the theoretical peak performance out of the thing for stuff other than benchmarks.

Linus was onto something... by Flaming+Foobar · 2004-11-11 23:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

Linus was right, then, I guess...

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The Limit of closed source developpement by DrYak · 2004-11-11 23:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

In a way, this shows us the limits of closed source developpement :
Compagnies have to concentrate their (limited) efforts on a few software/platform combinations. They cannot developpe a version for every CPU existing on this planet.

Microsoft has already a lot of work to do (Longhorn, 64bits XP, XP reloader, still supporting deprecated Win98, developing specials like WinCE, WinMedia, etc...) so they just cannot afford supporting more than 2 CPU types.

In open source, it's the opposite. Because the source is Open, even if the main developper can only target 1 CPU type, everyone is free to try to recompile/port the code to another architecture.
Just have a look at the impressive number of architectures supported by Linux (including weird platforms like cellphones, gaming console [DreamCast/XBOX/GameCube] ).

Maybe this trends will change if Microsoft finds a way to use "write once run everywhere" vm like .NET for it's OSes. But until then, they are tied to Intel x86, and can make some exceptions a few times...

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"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]

AMD stock by Sai+Babu · 2004-11-11 23:38 · Score: 4, Interesting

Wonder how this will affect the market.
AMD 2 year chart.
I bought a little bit back when the Athlon 64 was announced. Trading volume has been up since. Opteron announcement didn't seem to make much of an impression on the market.
Post election, the markets been up overall.
Do you think we'll see a runup to $30 over the next couple of days?
Now I'm feeling like I should have bought a bit more AMD but historically I've been bitten on almost every investment decision based on the techniclal merits of the product.
WHat's the feeling out there in /. land? Does the big M$ gorilla's 'endorsement', Sun's decision to use opteron in their low end servers, AMD technical superiority, Intel's seeming 'mis-steps', the overall market upswing, the fact that A64 is a NICE piece of hardware, that AMD is NOT intel, and make AMD a very attractive investment?
Whay about AMD taking on $600,000,000 debt the other day and adding a guy from Radio Shack (see latest SEC filing).
My favorite way of looking at stocks (useless for decisions as I still don't grok it) is the correlation between the analyst recommendations and price/volume.
What sort of analysis do these guys do? Ouija board?

BUT wait. What I really want to know is how you /.'ers who invest are planning to react to this Intel news.

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Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!

Wrong... by sultanoslack · 2004-11-11 23:48 · Score: 4, Informative

SGI and HP are the only ones left on the Itanic

Siemens and Bull (both major vendors in Europe), Dell, and IBM, and probably a lot more that I'm forgetting support ia64.

Actually pretty much every hardware vendor (that's traditionally worked with Intel CPUs) supports ia64 in one way or another.

But this article isn't a surprise. ia64 is just presently a pretty crappy CPU for clustered computing because it's very hot, sucks a lot of power and very expensive. When building a large cluster you naturally have to balance heat, energy and cost against performance much more than you do with most setups.

Re:Wrong... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-12 01:36 · Score: 4, Informative

Itanium isn't good for clusters. Power970 is a example of a good cpu for clusters.

However Itanium is good for single image NUMA architectures. They can do things very well that clusters are very crappy at. And Clusters can do lots of stuff cheaper and faster then those big NUMA stuff comes from.

Itanium is being pushed increasingly into higher end computers. You know why Itanium is important?

Power970 cpu limit: 2-4 cpus
Opteron cpu limit: 8 cpus
Itanium cpu limit: 512 cpus.

SGI is being very successfull with it's 512 itanium machines running Linux.

That's 512 cpus with ONE OS running a single Linux 2.6 kernel. (series 2.4 kernels didn't scale well past 4 cpus, and hit a brick wall in performance at 16 cpus. In one revision from 2.4 to 2.6 turned linux into a viable supercomputer-level peice of software BTW)

For example that 2nd ranked "top500" computer is a 20 machine Beowolf style cluster. Each machine has 512 cpus.

SGI was able to build a 10,160cpu cluster in 4 months.

Hell when they started construction in less then 2 weeks they were running space shuttle simulations on it.

That's AS it was being built.

You can't do that with power970's. You can't do that with Opterons. Those Itaniums are not going anywere, and comparing them to Opterons and Power970's is a mistake. These proccessors are in completely different leages.

The Opteron and Power970 just doesn't compete with them. And remember that even though clusters are very impressive but are not suitable for many tasks.

It competes with the Sun Sparcs and IBM Power architectures. Currently IBM is dominating...

And to say that the cpu that runs the #2 ranked cluster (and completely dominates the highest ranked Power970 or x86 machine) is a crapy clusting cpu is just plain ignorant.

Personally I would think it's more of a indication of Microsoft's inability or lack of desire to support operating systems that run at this level. Windows always has and continues to be only a mid to low end operating system.
Re:Wrong... by Paul+Jakma · 2004-11-12 03:14 · Score: 5, Interesting

Itanium cpu limit: 512 cpus.

SGI is being very successfull with it's 512 itanium machines running Linux.

Note that SGI are doing this with very very special hardware. IIRC each CPU brick in an Origin has 4 itanics. All these bricks are then interconnected with very very special CPU interconnect routers.

That these machines go to 512 CPUs has *nothing* to do with the CPUs being Itanic, it's all down to the ccNUMA interconnect technology (which SGI initially acquired from Cray). If you need further convincing of this, note that the Origin 3k architecture SGIs machines have essentially the same architecture, but use MIPS CPUs. This architecture could be applied to Opteron too, and probably with less effort, as Opteron natively supports ccNUMA and comes with CPU networking built-in.

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Re:Oh great , the x86 arch. wheezes on a bit longe by leathered · 2004-11-12 01:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

Change the record.

x86 has come a long way over the years. We now have a multitude of streaming SIMD instructions and the biggest complaint of x86, the lack of GPRs, has been remedied by AMD in x86-64. It's cheap, relatively easy to code for and is not going away any time soon.

And you say x86 is power hungry? What does that make Itanic?

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For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers

Re:Netcraft confirms it... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-12 02:30 · Score: 4, Funny

AMD CEO: [looks at the inscription on the rock] Brother Torvalds, what does it say?
BROTHER TORVALDS: It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Craig Barrett of Intel. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the final Itanium chip in the chip fab of Aaauuuggghhh...'
AMD CEO: What?
BROTHER TORVALDS: 'The chip fab of Aaauuuggghhh...'
AMD CEO: What is that?
BROTHER TORVALDS: He must have died while carving it.
AMD CEO: Look if he was dying he wouldn't have bothered to carve 'Aaauuuggghhh' on the rock he would have just said it.
AMD VP: Maybe he was dictating?
AMD CEO: Oh shut up.
AMD CEO: Well does it say anything else?
BROTHER TORVALDS: No, just 'Aaaaauuuugggghhh'
[coders making groaning sounds]
STEVE JOBS: Do you think he could have meant 'Seaaaauuuuuggghhhhttle'?
AMD VP: Where's that?
STEVE JOBS: Canada I think.
WOZ: Isn't there a Palo Aauuugghhlto in California?
AMD CEO: No that's Alto.
[All coders saying, 'Aaauuughhhlllto']
STEVE JOBS: Whooooouuuuaaa!
WOZ: No it's 'Aaaaauuuugggghhhh' from the back of the throat.
STEVE JOBS: No I mean, 'Whoooouuuuaaa!' as in surprise and alarm.
WOZ: Oh you mean like, 'Auuuuhhhhh!'
STEVE JOBS: Yes that's it. Auuuuuhhhhhaaa!
WOZ: Auuuuhhhhhaaa!
BROTHER TORVALDS: It's the legendary black suited law firm of of Aaaaauuuugghhhh!
AMD CEO: Run Away! RUN AWAY!
WOZ: RUN AWAY!

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Microsoft Dropping Itanium Support For Clusters

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