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HP, Intel Call it Quits on Itanium Partnership
envisionary writes "Hewlett-Packard Co. and Intel Corp. have ended their partnership to co-develop the Itanium 64-bit processor line, according to a report from Reuters. The move follows disappointing sales for servers based on the processor, according to the report. Intel and HP developed the processor about 10 years, but the chip has been a flop due to delays, cost overruns and lackluster demand."
The success of AMD in the 64 bit market has clearly had an effect. It will be interesting to see how the market takes this news.
comment directly in my journal
"Intel and HP developed the processor about 10 years, but the chip has been a flop due to delays, cost overruns and lackluster demand."
Maybe it's just me, but I thought it was because it cost $900 for a CPU that did about a much as a 1-2 Ghz 32-bit processor.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
The Register coverage: Who Sank Itanic?
Everyone has been saying that Itanic will sink for quite a while now; it's about time that HP and Intel realized they were pouring money down a drain and pulled the plug on the project.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
However, I would venture to say that they lost a LOT of (at least casual) sales due to lack of backwards compatibility a la x86-64.
Slashdotters said something was going to die, and it actually did...
I think I'm selling my iBook.
an enormous success as a space-heater.
...Digital's Alpha died for this miserable farrago.
an ex-Deccie.
No. It basically means that HP will be gettng out of the high-end market and instead will sell outsourced designs from Intel or AMD. In other words, HP's tranformation to a shitty version of Dell will be complete in 3 years.
HP will be selling Itanium for a long time because there's customers marooned on the IA64 platform now.
HP used to have an executive named Rick Beluzzo who sowed destruction and chaos wherever he went, much like Don Rumsfeld. My experience with him started 10 years ago when he was head of the computer group at HP - he liked Windows so much he decided that HP would become an NT server company, and would neglect Unix (a mistake that took years to correct.) And he made the Itanium deal with Intel, which ended up sucking billions out of Intel. Beluzzo then left for SGI, and drove it into the ground by stopping IRIX development and turning SGI into another NT clone builder. Beluzzo was then hired Microsoft (reward for loyalty?), and became their president - and was bounced a couple of years later. He's now the CEO of Quantum the hard drive manufacturer - good luck to them!
In the end, no matter how wonderful it is, if it doesn't sell it you have to move it over to the "total flop" category.
Flip your justification around: POWER5 SPECfp is neck and neck with Itanium -- AND is compatible with a large existing customer base, AND has a developer following, AND has an ecosystem around it that includes low-end derivatives such as PowerPC, AND is run by a company that has more of a clue. I think POWER5 also may be less expensive, more flexible, have better thermals, do better SPECint and be easier to design compilers for. Given all that, where does Itanium get to play?
Face it: the sole unique value proposition for Itanium is and always has been "We're Intel and we say you should use this." The one thing they could have and should have been able to offer -- performant compatibility with existing Intel processors -- they didn't do and they're paying for their arrogance big time.
It's too bad HP didn't already have a long term successful 64 bit chip, all the engineers that designed it from the ground up, and 10 years of history with something like the DEC Alpha chip.
From someone who left HP R&D last year (not WFR'd, got tired of my job and moved to a different company):
They had better than that. The folks that just joined Intel designed PA-RISC processors before moving to Itanium (sometimes refered to as PA-RISC 3). Those folks are top notch designers that have shipped succesful microprocessor products for 20 years. They already saved Intel's ass a few times in the Itanium collaboration. They designed Itanium2/McKinley entirely, and the upcoming Montecito is mostly a Fort-Collins design that replaces yet another Intel project failure (the codename and some of the most unpleasant parts of the design is all that remains), similarly it is rumored that Intel's Tukwila design (from the "famed" Alpha folks) is being ditched and will be replaced by yet another rescue design from Fort-Collins.
One of their managers was fond of saying that those folks could create a Sparc processor that would top the performance charts (Sparc has been performing pretty poorly for the last 10 years). I believe that.
Back when Alpha was in competition for the best performing microprocessor, its only real competition was PA-RISC. It was a leapfrog game between the two architectures. Since PA-RISC was never 'sexy' (few HP products are), the public only remembers Alpha, but reality was different.
As to keeping Alpha, remember that PA-RISC had a marketshare about 5x the one of Alpha (~30% of the Unix volume, both in volume and revenue; Alpha was stuck around 5-6%). And PA was already on the way out when HP acquired Compaq. Not only that, but most Alpha folks had already left Compaq by then (mostly to Intel as a group, and individual to other companies). So Alpha was never an option for HP. So please stop spreading this myth that HP killed Alpha. DEC/Compaq killed Alpha before the merger.
Regarding run by a complete loser of a woman with the sole intent of systematically destroying the company, I had the pleasure of working with some former engineers from "the old DEC". Some of them are excellent people. Overall, however, I saw a lot of bad attitudes that could sink a tech company. NIH, no concern for deadlines, shipping a real product or customer experience. Some of those folks are so wrapped in the memory of the golden years when DEC R&D was perceived as the best in the industry (while the real top talent has already moved on or retired), they don't realize what makes a company tick (pleasing customers).
I am sorry to say that, while DEC/Compaq (and now HP) management might not have helped, I believe that the Alpha/Tru64 R&D folks played a good part in the killing of their products, by being a bit too much convinced of their own greatness and failing to see that this technical greatness did not help their customers. Their toys did not win in the marketplace, outsold by less sexy widgets built by less arrogant folks (including the PA-RISC and HP-UX teams). I do not like Carly much but she and her team are probably saving HP and what remains of DEC by keeping such bad attitudes in check (by cutting the teams that do not deliver). Being 'sexy' doesn't help much in the marketplace, and it doesn't seem to help much in HP anymore. Good, too much money was wasted on sexy things.
People are rooting for the underdog, cheering AMD and boohing Itanium, longing for the good old time of technically pure Alpha. Yet Itanium is a very clean design compared to x86 / x86-64, and people forget some of the crap associated with Alpha (lack of byte loads on first generation processors, WTF !?). Such selective blindness is ok for teenagers in their basements, unfortunately they seem to be held by more senior folks who should know better.
Our industry is in a pretty sad state. Perception, mindshare, hype and FUD matter a lot more than they should.