Microsoft Announces End of the Line For Itanium Support

WrongSizeGlass writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft has announced on its Windows Server blog the end of its support for Itanium. 'Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2, and Visual Studio 2010 will represent the last versions to support Intel's Itanium architecture.' Does this mean the end of Itanium? Will it be missed, or was it destined to be another DEC Alpha waiting for its last sunset?"

Comments

Re:Not Very Comparable

[damn_registrars]

Compiler for Windows

Therein lies the problem. Why were you running an OS originally written for x86 (as in 8086) on a RISC processor? An argument could be made that Microsoft never would have written NT for Alpha had they not been paid specifically to do so. And even at that point you were running a 64bit CPU on a 32bit extensions to a 16bit GUI to an 8bit OS ... you know the rest.

The Alpha was supposed to run Unix - Tru64 Unix in particular. Running in a proper 64bit environment the Alpha was an incredible chip.

But then I must be mad, as I keep my Alpha running NT 4.0.

Trying real hard to think of a good reason to do that, especially knowing that there are Linux distros that run brilliantly on the Alpha ... nope, can't think of any good reasons to run NT on an Alpha. Indeed you might be crazy.