Dell Dumping Itanium

njcoder writes "In a PC World article it is disclosed and confirmed by Intel that Dell is dropping support for Itanium processors. 'After Advanced Micro Devices demonstrated that 64-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set offered a smoother transition to 64-bit computing, Intel released a version of Xeon with similar technology, and Dell now offers 64-bit Xeon processors across its product line.'" More from the article: "The chip maker has since backed off its original statements about Itanium and is now promoting the chip as a high-performance replacement for reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processors in Unix servers from companies such as Sun Microsystems and IBM. Hewlett-Packard, a co-designer of the processor, has embraced Itanium as the processor of choice for its high-end servers. Fujitsu. and NEC are also among the system vendors that sell servers with the processor." The story is also being reported at Ars Technica.

Comments

Don't forget SGI

[Anonymous Coward]

SGI uses Itanium for their Altix line of products that run Linux. They need Itanuim for its ability to handle hundreds of processors in one system with cc:NUMA, and its huge physical address space for their customers who need several terabytes of RAM in one system.

Re:Fair play

[$RANDOMLUSER]

> That's why we had the "Pentium(tm)" and not "586" being marketted.

No, Intel tried (and failed) to trademark a number and so had to come up with names.

Re:Exactly what *is* the Dell aversion to AMD?

[js3]

well it is up to dell to take the deal or not, that's why I say they are greedy. If someone offered me an exclusive deal (the key word here being offered not forced) then my greediness would decide whether to take it or not.

Re:Hmmm.

[Lumpy]

if you are proud in ANY way of your customer support then you have been sucessfully brainwashed by HR and marketing FUD departments.

I used to reccomend Dell's to people, I no longer do because of the nightmare the Tech support is, INCLUDING the platinum support level for the high end servers. I have a 8450 server loaded with a 7 foot tall rack of powervaults connected to it and It was like pulling teth to get the thing fixed. the techs blamed the "cables" of the powervaults several times and took 2 weeks to get us up and running again after a fatal crash because the powervaults were starting rebuilds of spare drives and then offlining them breaking the raid 50.

dell tech support sucks. that is why we are moving back to HP.

I type this from the best laptop that I have ever had, a Lattitude D800, the hardware is sound, but they drop the ball everywhere else.

not anticompetitive!

[conJunk]

if as you say "Intel offers a better deal" -- and that deal was based upon exclusivity. (In other words: "You get a 15% discount if you sell only Intel chips"), It seems to me that that would be illegal and anti-competitive.

What on earth do you mean? That's about as standard as it gets. It's called exclusive licensing, and that's the way it goes. Companies offer price incentives to sign exclusive deals. It's competitive because Dell is free to sign exclusively with anybody.

Here some other examples: Your job. Your company offers you $100,000/year to build widgets *exclusively* for them. If they wanted a clause in your contract that said that you may not build widgets for anyone else, you aren't going to say it's anticompetitive.

How about your car? Toyotas ship with (I'm making this up) Panasonic audio components. If you asked Toyota to make a line with Zenith components, they'll probably say "sorry, but we have an exclusive agreement with panasonic."

I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it assuredly is not illegal.

Re:not anticompetitive!

[popo]

"What on earth do you mean? That's about as standard as it gets. It's called exclusive licensing, and that's the way it goes. Companies offer price incentives to sign exclusive deals. It's competitive because Dell is free to sign exclusively with anybody." No, IANAL but I don't think that's true at all. Were that the case there would be no such thing as "anti-competitive behaviour". Microsoft bundling would be seen as "exclusivity". 'Exclusivity' means that you have the sole right to distribute a product within a certain region or territory. But as far as I know it does not mean that that right comes with the other requirement that you don't stock competing products. As far as I know, that would be the very definition of "anti-competitive". Any lawyers in the house?

Re:not anticompetitive!

[ectospasm]

It is anti-competitive. It's just not necessarily illegal. At least in the US, companies aren't allowed to require exclusive licenses if it can be proven that they have a monopoly. Doing so would be an abuse of their monopoly status. IANAL, and all that.

It is arguable whether Intel has monopoly status or not.

Re:Exactly what *is* the Dell aversion to AMD?

[Anonymous Struct]

We buy a lot of Dell hardware, and we've asked this question every single year for the last 3 years. Every time, the answer has been that AMD can't provide chips fast enough to make them viable for distribution. Basically, they don't feel like they'd be able to meet demand, and they'd have customers waiting on hardware that may or may not be coming some time soon. That's what they tell us, at least.

Not long now for SGI

[leathered]

They bet the farm on Itanium and will shortly pay the price.