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IBM to Drop Itanium
Hack Jandy writes "Xbitlabs is reporting that IBM chose not to persue Itanium in their next generation server lineup because of the "market acceptance issues" of the platform. They will still continue with new revisions of Xeon servers, however. With IBM's investments in Power, I can't help but think the writing was already on the wall. The article also hints that IBM might start using Power in their high end server products."
WTF does "The article also hints that IBM might start using Power in their high end server products" mean anyway? The processor is called POWER, and IBM already uses it in their high-end server products, like the ones that used to be called RS/6000. As for Power, well, show me a transistor that works without it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What? IBM already uses POWER in it's high-end server products. What do you think they develop it for, anyway?
Software piracy is victimless theft.
On second thought, maybe they'll start appearing cheaply on ebay. That'd be nice.
I am trolling
lets face it when Cell arrives formally theres going to be little point in ploughing resources into something thats effectively headed for obsolesence
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
First they drop a PC line tha was not making them money. Then they drop a server line that's clearly not the future of that space. I think they're making some right decisions here. If the POWER platform succeeds, as it more likely would when resources are focussed on it, and it is accepted as a viable alternative to the PC platform, the ensuing competition would probably be good for all of us.
True, but they make a real nice keychain!
IBM will be using the new Power based CELL CPUs in their new servers. Two of my friends are already working on the new architecture but unfortunately can't talk about any of the details. Both, IBM and SONY, will be using CELL CPUs in virtually all of their new products from DVD players to supercomputers. Anyone wants to make a bet with me?
baloney, call it by its proper name AMD64
Help fight continental drift.
Tosser! Since when do modern operating systems come with a spell checker, i believe my OFFICE platform comes with a spell checker, i don't really recall a spell checker being a pre-req for a base O/S ..
Therefore, :) is it too much to ask for people to engage brain before putting hand to keyboard.
On a side note, I think we should go back to ZX81 architecture, i mean those guys really had something going there, that 1k ram pack was really ace, maybe i can hack it into my current PC, the extra ram would do wonders for me
Article has some strange ideas about what constitutes a High-end server. I'd imagine a IBM P595 which supports up to 64 Processors would be high end... IBM seems to think so too. But then again what do they know about high end. I mean, they are only #2 in the High end server market (over $1,000,000 per server), and #1 in the mid-range server market (between $100,00 and $,1,00,000 per server).
What IBM has decided not to do is support the Montecito IA64 chips. Apparently Intel initially approached IBM about licensing the X3 technology for an chipset to support Montecito, IBM agreed and shut down their own program to develop a chipset and redeployed the resources, Intel came back a few weeks later and said they had changed their mind, would IBM build an X3 chipset for Montecito but by this point they had also announced that the next post-Montecito Itanium chip would be plug compatible with Xeon. Hence the market opportunity for Montecito is about 18 months so it's not worth IBM's effort to build a chipset for only that time.
IBM has therefore decided to continue to sell the existing x455 servers through this year, skip Montecito and support Itanium again with X3 when it becomes plug compatible with Xeon. That means that for about a year they will have no server that will support Itanium.
Two years is a long time in this business so who knows if anyone outside of the HP/UX install base will care about Itanium by then but IBM does have a plan for continued IA64 support if current trends continue.
This is not good news for Itanium but it's also not a complete cancellation.
Ok, so we all know the various CPU names and who makes them etc but do we actually know how they compare? Me and the team I work for have total ownership of 7 SAP Application servers and 1 database server, total ram in the DB server is 48GB and the App servers have been 4 and 12GB's each (normal compared to batch processing). They're all running on either IBM P630 to P670's. What does that mean? I have NO idea except that they are able to comfortable deal with 1200 active users at any given time.
now, if someone can tell me that Itanium will give us better performance for more we'll look into it, if it's Xeon then it's Xeon (pah but you get the idea). What I fail to see is why it's important what hardware is being used as long as it does the job it needs to do!
Thanks.
I think he meant "purees Itanium in their next generation server lineup."
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If Intel released them at a low price and with desktop motherboards that were affordable. If an average geek could build the latest itanium system for $200 more than the latest athlon system, well, people would buy it because it's something different, it performs well, and because they want to mess with the architecture. It shuld have been marketed like the P-Pro. Too much for the desktop user, but if you want one you can afford it and you can build it/buy it!
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
Proof that the best way to accelerate an Itanium is at 9.8 m/s^2.
(That's 32 ft/s^2 in ye olde units.)
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
..."Nostradamos" as a name. The first psychic CPU that predicts what tasks you will be doing.
Unfortunately, all the apps and any kernel for it have to be programmed in quatrains...
Whoever said that the ISAs would condense down to only x86, PowerPC, and SPARC appears to have been correct. Alpha is gone, mostly. MIPS is gone in the desktop/server, mostly. Itanium kinda came and went, it appears. PA-RISC is still popular...but but HP wanted Itanium.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
what happened with itanium is intel made a number of huge gambles on technology.
in order for itanium to be successful, every single one of them had to pan out.
what happened is virtually none of them panned out.
intel blew their load on a high risk gamble, and lost. they still can't quite come to grips with the fact and are still sinking billions of dollars into a doomed architecture -- despite the fact that just about every original itanium partner has already given up on it (err.. "jumped ship", hence the itanic joke)
intel has been beating on itanium for nearly a decade and it still hasn't lived up to a single design goal.
and before the itanium defenders go "no, itanium was only ever intended for rackmount servers", that is 100% contrary to intel's own marketing literature which states that "workstation" is one of the target markets of the itanium.
Hey dipshit, someone should teach you the difference between EPIC (Intel's IA64 instruction set) and EM64T, which is the kludge they strapped onto an overheated overpriced Pentium 4 (Called a Xeon). That is a bloody fact. Nobody was talking about Itanium. In fact, next to nobody is BUYING Itanium. This is why intel had to eat some of its own lunch and make a 64bit Xeon line. Go flame yourself, you crybaby.