Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

20 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. Time to shop Ebay! by xtermin8 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sound like its a good time to snag some bargain boxen!

    1. 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."
    2. Re:Time to shop Ebay! by spellraiser · · Score: 4, Funny

      The plural of pedant is pedants.

      --
      I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
  2. 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.

  3. Talk About Bleedin' Obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    MS 1: No one is selling Itanium based desktops or workstations, only servers
    MS 2: Indeed
    MS 1: Why are we trying to make a version of Windows XP for it then?
    MS 2: Because ... err ... wait, that's stupid
    MS 1: Indeed, let's not bother with that
    MS 2: Cool.
    MS 1: Don't want to piss off Intel though, let's pretend that we'll keep Server 2003 running on Itanium and that we support it
    MS 2: hehe yeah

    1. Re:Talk About Bleedin' Obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      INTEL 1: Did MS say they would continue supporting Itanium on W2K3?
      INTEL 2: Yes
      INTEL 1: Did you believe them?
      INTEL 2: No.
      INTEL 1: Shit. What's Plan B again?
      INTEL 2: Keep fooling the public until we can find a way out of this mess.
      INTEL 1: Plan B it is.

  4. 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.

  5. Re:dear slashdot by xNoLaNx · · Score: 5, Informative

    To put it nicely, Slashdot rarely breaks news. To put it specifically, this is common. Slashdot depends on user submission for them to have any idea what's going on.

  6. 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.

  7. Itanic hits Iceberg. News at 11. by RealAlaskan · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I have an NT4 disk which will install on Alpha, MIPS and IA86. After that version, Intel dropped support for Alpha and MIPS, and look what happened to them.

    I don't think this is a good sign for the Itanic, but I don't think anyone will be surprised. This may not be the end of the line for it, though. MS has only dropped their workstation version, not their server version.

    The really interesting question is: will Linux be able to carry Itanic, now that MS is starting to leave it behind?

    --
    See what I've been reading.
  8. Re:Itanic hits Iceberg. News at 11. by rainman_bc · · Score: 4, Informative

    Intel dropped support for Alpha and MIPS

    What? I thought Alpha was made by DEC... What support did Intel have for Alpha? You probably meant that Microsoft dropped support for Alpha and MIPS.

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
  9. Re:Not too big of a surprise... by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Informative

    Totally wrong. HP pulled out of Itanium development, and Intel bought their part of the development team.

    For some reason, Intel and HP have been working together all this time in developing the Itanium, ever since Compaq bought DEC (maker of the Alpha), and then HP bought Compaq. Suddenly, HP has brightened up and realized they don't need to help their vendor develop their processor, so now Intel is taking it all over, and HP will concentrate on making systems that use the processor. At least, that's the spin Intel puts on it.

    According to Intel, Itanium production is still going forward with no plans to decrease it.

  10. Re:Important Lesson for Intel by networkBoy · · Score: 4, Informative

    I call bullshit.
    It was not an attempt to drop backwards compatibility, but rather an attempt to produce a product vastly superior to an x86 based design.
    Itanium was not designed for the desktop, or even the standard server market. It was designed for number crunching, which it works quite well at.
    Is a Cray XT3 backwards compatible with a Cray1 or even a YMP?
    NO.
    Same thing goes here. In fact Itanium was designed to compete with the likes of Cray. It was never, ever, designed with desktop in mind.
    -nB

    --
    whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  11. I hope this doesn't affect their supercomputer OS. by yorkpaddy · · Score: 4, Funny

    I have been dying for their supercomputer OS. Microsoft considers supercomputer OS . I really hope MS doesn't ditch that OS too. I have been speccing itanium clusters and they seem to fit my needs. I also can't wait for .Net to come to Itanium, I'm sure MS will write the best optimizing compiler.

    --
    "brxref .k.p ,.by xprt. gbe.p.oycmaycbi yd. cby.nci.bj. ru yd. am.pcjab lgxlcj" don'
  12. Remember to keep the radio on by LordRPI · · Score: 4, Funny

    This just seems to be another iceberg to hit the Itanic.

  13. 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.'"
  14. 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.

  15. Re:I thought the title said: by krbvroc1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Microsoft was dropping Windows XP Period.

    Yes, it seems the XP Period version of Windows targeted to females was not selling. MS tried the new Windows with Wings packaging but the odd box size met resistance from retailers who didn't want to waste already cramped shelf space. The 28 day calander application was just too buggy.

    The whole situation is just a bloody mess.