Microsoft Drops Windows XP for Itanium

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."

Comments

Not surprising

[xNoLaNx]

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.

Talk About Bleedin' Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Talk About Bleedin' Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:dear slashdot

[xNoLaNx]

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.

Itanic hits Iceberg. News at 11.

[RealAlaskan]

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?

Re:One more giant....

[BagOBones]

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.

Re:Time to shop Ebay!

[4of12]

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.)