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Microsoft Drops Windows XP for Itanium

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the calling-it-quits dept.

MBCook writes "According to an article on The Register, Microsoft has canceled the version of Windows XP for Intel's Itanium processor. They will continue to sell Windows Server 2003 for the Itanium in the high-end server market, but 'For the mainstream server and workstation markets, however, we believe we can best serve our customers needs with Windows Server 2003 Standard x64 Edition, and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, respectively.' So much for Itainum workstations running Windows, but then again the article notes that no major vendors actually sell Itanium workstations anymore."

8 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. Not surprising by xNoLaNx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Everyone is lowering or entirely dropping their level of support for the Itanium, and now with Intel's interest moving to a better 64-bit system, this is good for everyone except maybe Intel and those who bought Itanium's.

  2. Quite old news but... by MegaManXcalibur · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Although this is old news I will say this move does make sense for Microsoft. The Itanium is a server based processor, Windows XP is a consumer and workstation based operating system. This move doesn't seem too horribly suprising.

  3. One more giant.... by NitroWolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just one more giant ram into the hind end of Intel. Man, they took a beating last year, and here we are only 6 days into 2005, and Intel is shaping up to be the industry punching bag.

    I hate to jump on the underdog bandwagon, but given the high price of Intel processors over the past couple decades, I'm glad to see it finally catching up to them, and in spades no less.

    The sad thing is that AMD seems to be heading down the Intel road now and in another decade or two AMD will just be where Intel is now... offering overpriced processors, and we'll be rooting for whoever is eyeing AMD's chops at that point.

    Why can't any company come in, clean up with good products at cheap prices and STAY THAT WAY? Why do they all have to get greedy in the end? This phenomenon is not constrained to the CPU market, of course, we see it every single day.

    1. Re:One more giant.... by BagOBones · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because unless your processor is as fast or faster than the other guy you are not going to sell many.. Think Transmeta.

      AMD has been neck in neck with intel for a long time and their pricing was killing them.. They now have a high quality product that people respect and will pay more for. So they are finally making money..

      Still note that the price to performance award is still AMDs.

      --
      EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
    2. Re:One more giant.... by GlassHeart · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Why can't any company come in, clean up with good products at cheap prices and STAY THAT WAY?

      The answer lies in the eventual need to compete in the stock market for capital. To be competitive, you have to offer your immoral investors better returns than other companies. The reason I call them immoral is because, by and large, the stock market investors do not consider any other metric except money.

      Thus, once you begin to need capital - which is inevitable if you want to grow - you have to play the game of maximizing profit. This is the insatiable greed you are talking about. In many industries, there's basically no way of getting the kind of money you need to compete without going public.

  4. Re:Time to shop Ebay! by 4of12 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You laugh, I laugh, and put my money on Opteron for my latest purchase, but...if you want pure single-processor floating point performance and don't need x86 compatability, then Itanium 2 is still worth a look (as is Power5 and the latest G5 chips).

    It's the ultimate irony that Intel is getting spanked by the same lesson that other manufacturers have learned from Intel even back in the 486 era. Namely,

    that the market size for non-x86 compatable high performance RISC chips is too small to be profitable.
    Subtle clue: It's not "Intel" that customers are locked into, it's "x86". (Likewise, it's not Microsoft, it's the Windows API.)
    --
    "Provided by the management for your protection."
  5. dear ALpaca2500 by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why didn't you submit this news a week ago?

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  6. Re:Important Lesson for Intel by bani · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Itanium was not designed for the desktop, or even the standard server market.

    Yes it absolutely was. itanium was designed to replace ia32, totally. They wanted itanium on everything from desktop to supercomputers.

    the grand master plan was for itanium to take over the world, ia32 would die a horrible death and everyone would live happily ever after with a new, elegant architecture and forget the monstrosity ia32 ever existed.

    intel saw what apple managed to pull off with the 68k -> ppc architecture migration, and enviously hoped to emulate them.

    intel's own current marketing literature even promotes itanium2 as an entry-level server and workstation processor! delusional at best.