Itanium Will Only Be Partly Supported by Longhorn

ver.sicher.ungsvergleich writes "Although stopping short of pulling the plug entirely on Itanium, MS has said that Longhorn will only be able to work for a limited number of higher-end jobs. On the positive side, Microsoft does see a future for the chip, but that 'big iron' slot is not exactly what Chipzilla envisioned as Itanium's future."

Comments

Intel is losing it's edge

[confusion]

Between this and their roadmap that almost exclusively involves power consumption improvements, Intel is starting to lose it's edge over AMD.
From talking to Intel folks quite a bit, it seems like there is a lot of blind pride on Intel's part in their product line and vision, and they dismiss most anything that I raise as an issue with their performance vs. AMD, and that's not a good sign to me.
Intel is not dying that's for sure, but they're going to have to make a course correction and not make another decade long mistake like itanium.

Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/

Re:Intel is losing it's edge

[CubicleView]

I'm probably way off (a little knowledge is a dangerous thing as they say) but as I understand it, most of the money in the comming years will be in mobile technologies. Big improvements in batteries and this move to fuel cells etc will offer more power but efficiency of the processor will still be hugely important. Particularly considering processor tech is at a level that even basic models offer more than enough power for most users. Of course the server market is different I'm sure (and being completely ignorant of it I won't guess at intels future there)

Re:Heh.

[lightyear4]

Does this remind anyone else of WindowsME? Vista has seemed to shed features in droves; WinME was a ultimately a non-version with some cosmetic changes and function that didn't live up to the hype. Is this what we can expect for Redmonds latest and greatest?

New Design Getting Flushed Away

[SumDog]

It is rare when someone comes up with an entirely new architecture and instruction set. The IA64 was a complete break and had it been pushed correctly, AMD would be rushing to make IA64 clones instead of Intel supporting AMDs 64-bit extension.

If I remember correctly, the IA64 has 128 general purpose registers and 128 floating point registers. It's a load/store machine and it's pretty close to a RISC arch (really it's an "very long word" instruction set, but lets not get picky).

It was a chance to make a clean break from the old 32-bit legacy chips, however the price was and is too high and AMDs are cheaper and still very powerful.

I really hope this chip doesn't die off. At least with limited support in the new Windows, it will still have a strong server market, but I think a lot of companies are going to be afraid to buy because of running into compatibility problems. I know at where I work, we'd like to have servers that can do anything/general purpose. You put a limit on what the OS can do and then you're afraid of old legacy or propriety software not working correctly

But hey as long as you use Linux, the IA64 is fairly well supported, and it will be better supported in Linux than in Windows!

Sumdog

Re:Fortran programmers don't need (or want) Window

[slavemowgli]

I think you fail to realise an important thing: change typically happens by evolution, not revolution, and that's even more true when there's a multi-billion dollar industry involved. Do you honestly believe that everyone's just going to throw every system they have away?

It's not gonna happen. The industry likes migration/upgrade paths, and in 90% of all cases, a design that extends is gonna win over one that outright replaces.

Intel seems to have been unwilling to face that fact, but what they failed to realise is that their monopoly is not big enough to simply force change on people - rather, their move just gave AMD etc. an opportunity to slowly but steadily chip away at that monopoly.

From a market perspective, that's a good thing, of course - but if I was an Intel shareholder, I'd demand that heads roll for this gross mismanagement in the top executive floor.

What will Longhorn/ Vista have?

[joelsanda]

Everything I've read on Slashdot and Wired talks to what will not be in Longhorn. What will be in Longhorn that will make it better than XP? More and different vulnerabilities? (Maybe it will ship with a demo .wmv file showing Microsoft executive throwing chairs around offices in response to other MS executives leaving for Google!)

Seriously ... though I'm an Apple user from before Macs were released I've also used every version of Windows - always at work but I've also had every version except XP at home.

With each new Mac OS X release I look forward to what will be in that version - but there's little talk around the water cooler regarding what will actually be in Longhorn/ Vista. Unlike Mac OS releases, which people anticipate because of stuff like Dashboard, iTunes integration, .Mac integration, Spotlight and Automator, all I hear is what Longhorn/ Vista won't have ...