Intel Dumps Iitanium's x86 Hardware Compatibility

Spinlock_1977 writes "C|Net is running a story that Intel is going back to software x86 emulation on Itanium in order to reclaim chip real estate. (room for another 9MB of cache?) One notable quote about x86 emulation: 'Basically, no one ever used hardware-based IA-32 execution, so better to use the silicon for something else,' said Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff. 'Of course, basically no one uses software-based emulation either, but at least that doesn't cost chip real estate.'"

Comments

Better use for sillicon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel's chips will use that extra sillicon for a nice pair of fake breasts. That's sure to up their earnings next quarter. Take that AMD.

Intel is continuing development?

[DurendalMac]

Sheesh, the Itanic wasn't exactly a success story. How does it fit into their new roadmap with cooler chips that eat less power? That processor was a goddamn space heater.

What he meant to say was..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Of course, basically no one uses Itanium either..."

Re:Shouldn't matter with modern software.

[Eightyford]

Virtual machine based stuff (Java/JVM, .NET/CLR) (even popular on cell phones these days)

So that's why it takes two friggen minutes to turn on my cell phone!

Re:Shouldn't matter with modern software.

[bobcat7677]

Now I understand! That little coffee cup symbol that comes up on my phone is really telling me to go have a cup of coffee while I wait for the Java software to start. And all along I thought it was not functional at all but just an amusing little pun on the "Java" name... Silly me.

Re:Shouldn't matter with modern software.

[chris_eineke]

You mean 'a Java programmer with a collection of instances of class ModPoint'. ;)