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Is HP Paying Intel To Keep Itanium Alive?
itwbennett writes "In a court filing, Oracle accused HP of secretly contracting with Intel to keep making Itanium processors so that it can continue to make money from its locked-in Itanium customers and take business away from Oracle's Sun servers. Oracle says that Intel would have long ago killed off Itanium if not for these payments from HP. For its part, HP called the filing a 'desperate delay tactic' in the lawsuit HP filed against Oracle over its decision to stop developing for Itanium."
I don't see what's wrong with this. HP is just making sure their existing customers are supported, even if it means making specific contracts with Intel directly. I'd be angry at HP if I bought an expensive server and they wouldn't support it.
Maybe Oracle should come up with better and faster servers so that they can win customers on their own merits?
Maybe Oracle should do something useful instead of being a massive patent troll and distributor of obnoxiously terrible software.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
What do you call customers on an Oracle system? Locked out? :)
Since when are companies not allowed to pay each other for services?
HP is contracting chip production and development out to Intel.
So what? Who is harmed?
"...take business away from Oracle's Sun servers."
Trust me Oracle, the only company that's having the slightest negative impact on your server sales is...Oracle.
Solaris 11 shipped last week. They added code to prevent it from running on the UltraSparc processors. Thanks assholes.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
So, HP has a processor that they use a contract fab to build. It's just that in this case the fab belongs to Intel. Big whoop.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
"Oracle says that Intel would have long ago killed off Itanium if not for these payments from HP"
In other news most companies will kill products that don't have paying customers. HP is paying to make sure their supply chain stays open to support their customers, Intel has a customer for Itanium so they're maintaining production of the product. Oracle's a whiny brat who's pissed that customers that still have support on their older stuff have less of an incentive to change providers... If Oracle can't give them a compelling reason to leave that isn't "your old stuff isn't supported anymore 'cause we sued intel to stop support for your hardware" I don't have much sympathy for Oracle
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
I am thinking Intel should sell the Itanium division back to HP once they are sure no other vendors are using it.
Same thing happened, with it being produced long after GM stopped making vehicles that used it.
...and Itanium is the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
I'm not sure what sort of Faustian Bargain HP made with Intel over Itanium, but it certainly had nothing to do with quality products or customer service.
Anyone sane bolted for Linux long ago.
First off, the notion that Itanium is "dying" is ridiculous - or at least just as ridiculous as the idea that SPARC is dying. Power is the only high-end RISC processor that's really thriving. Both IA64 and SPARC bring in hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter, although their revnue is slowly dwindling:
http://smarterquestions.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/UNIX_Revenue_08-2011.png
Second, comparing Oracle suddenly killing support to Microsoft and Red Hat killing support is ridiculous. Red Hat is continuing to develop the 5.x tree for IA64, despite the fact that maybe 5% of Itanium customers ran RHEL. Oracle, on the other hand, is just suddenly saying "No more. Nada." despite the fact that they build key apps for all three HP Itanium operating systems (Rdb for VMS, Oracle for HP-UX, Tuxedo for Nonstop.) There's also the fact that Oracle has its own competing UNIX OS and processor, one that hasn't performed particularly well in comparison to Power or Itanium for several years. The whole thing just looks like Oracle is being a bully.
While it obviously sucks that people continue using old software on crappy systems because they can't afford to switch to something else, that's just the way it goes. Oracle, do you really think that if you sue HP/Intel and break up their business relationship, the resulting guys who are left out in the cold will switch over to, of all providers, the provider that resulted in them getting fucked over? Seriously?
In 2002 Sun alleges that people don't buy their product because too many people choose to use Microsoft.
In 2011 Oracle alleges that people don't buy their product because too many people choose to use Itanium.
Lame, lame, lame.
Is McNealey now working at Oracle?
What about Apple?
Their OSs drop support for hardware platforms on a regular basis. (I know it's an Itanium discussion, but...)
The SCO Group (then Caldera) which had purchased the rights to sell copies of the old Unix from Novell, sued IBM because the freely available Linux competed the SCO Groups old Unix offering.
So Oracle has become the next SCO Group, quick somebody tell PJ!
No, you'd never want it in a desktop, much though Intel hoped that would be where it went, but there is something to be said for what it can do in ultra high end servers with a ton of CPUs.
What you want for a CPU for a bigass compute server isn't always what you want for a desktop. Hell you can see that even with Sun's new Ultrasparcs. Different from both the x86 and Itanium, they are all about tons o' threads. They offer up to 8 threads in hardware per core on the newer ones. Such a thing would be totally useless on a desktop, a waste of silicon. However on, say, a web server such a thing could be very useful.
Itanium isn't the One True Way(tm) for processors, but they are useful for somethings, which is part of the reason HP likes them.
Oracle is filing suit, to stop a company, from paying another company, to make a product it wants?
That's funny. Not to long ago Oracle stated that they have proof that Intel was killing Itanium and that HP was harming their own customers by not admitting it. Now they say that the exact opposite is true; that HP is paying to ensure that Itanium stays alive. Either this change occurred after Oracle dropped their support for Itanium (unlikely), or Oracle just admitted that they have been printing libelous statements about HP, in addition to breaking their contract with them.
I hope the assholes pay for both.
Itanium is very little more than PA-RISC64. The people who needed it didn't know they wanted it and when AMD x86-64 came out they ignored Itanium and SPARC to their peril. As a result, performance has suffered dearly. PA-RISC64 and SPARC64 are the true multiprocessing performers. Intel Xeon and Pentium represent at least one decade-worth of performance setbacks when it comes to multiprocessing performance.
But, Linux runs great on x86-64, so why bother with high performance? Too bad. We still struggle with SMP on x86-64 and Intel PAE. What a shame.
Kriston
They've never been big in the ultra high end market. The area where they do tend to have stuff, well x64 has been making a big entrance there. These days you can get an x64 system with 2TB of memory and that really tends to do the trick for large databases, which is one of the main ultra high end markets you see MS in (MSSQL is a serious contender as a high end DB server).
These days, most things aren't going with one ultra high end system, they are going with a cluster of regular systems. Those clusters are generally x64 parts since they are cheap, readily available, powerful as hell, and run tons of software.
So I can see why there may not be any real demand for Windows on Itaniums since in situations where you use it, x64 meets the need for less.
Also it isn't as though MS is dropping Itanium on the floor. They are just not going to support it in their next server OS. You can get Server 2008R2 for Itanium and that'll be supported until 7/10/2018 minimum (they've extended support dates before, but never shortened them). So they are keeping support on going, just announcing it is coming to an end so you've time to plan.
Plus they could always change their mind. Though most don't know it, Windows is designed to be pretty modular and can be ported without a ton of trouble (as Windows 8 on ARM demonstrates). If there is demand for Itanium, or some other platform, in the future you can bet you'll see Windows for it.
Itanium was a joint Intel-HP project, remember? HP might well pay Intel to keep it alive.
The idea behind Itanium was that it had lots of new, different, patentable technology, so Intel didn't have to worry about clones. The problem was that it wasn't better technology. Just different.
Classic bad CPU architecture ideas of the "build it and they will come" variety:
In the spectrum of concurrency, shared-memory mulitprocessors with synchronized caches work, and clusters of powerful machines which communicate over networks work. Those are the extremes of the concurrency range. With the notable exception of graphics processors, no machine in the middle of that range has been a success. Such machines can be built, but are so hard to program they're always behind the classical architectures. The Cell in the PS/3 is the only example ever deployed in volume, and that nearly killed Sony.
At least they're not maintaining said obnoxiously terrible software. They're ignoring it (OpenOffice) or using a monkey with typewriter (MySQL and the Oracle DB).
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I don't see how HP contracting with Intel to continue Itanium support is a problem. Nor do I see Oracle deciding to stop supporting Itanium as lawsuit-worthy either. Both companies need to stop slinging stupid lawsuits at each other, and refocus on producing computer hardware and software. It is sad that business success in the tech industry is now measured by who has the bigger team of lawyers, not by who has the best engineers.
Its common knowledge at least within my crowd that Intel only keeps Itanic going because HP has them locked into a long term contract due to HP canning their HP-PA Risc processor and licensing various things to Intel at the same time.
You sound pretty biased. You sound like someone who inherited an all Oracle shop. Sorry :P
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int 21h
Yes I agree Open office was horrible, but luckily there is this thing known as a "fork" or spoon or something and i hear its getting better. it may not have to go on the cart! Isn't that nice? Although I do think its rather ironic that you are calling One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison a " distributor of obnoxiously terrible software" when he is being sued by HP for NOT distributing said obnoxious terrible software.
Personally i think BOTH companies should be told to fuck right off and quit wasting the courts time. Oracle doesn't want to make software for Itanic because its a fricking dud, its a bomb, its a stinky turd, its Vista. Who can blame them for not wanting to waste money supporting a dead end system with a dwindling customers base?
And if HP wants to throw good money after bad getting Intel to continue work on the Itanic? Well this IS the same company that blew a billion for WebOS only to shitcan the developers and who took a giant bath on Touchpad. Nothing in the law says they can't be complete morons and do as many stupid things as they want with their money, despite that "maximize shareholder value" meme that is pushed everywhere with no actual basis in reality. hell if it were true Jerry Yang and the board of yahoo would be in prison now!
So if this were a sane world the judge would tell HP and oracle to please go fuck right off, or at least make their CEOs duke it out bare knuckle. my money would be on Meg BTW, old Larry has got a bit of a paunch going and I have a feeling Meg would be a biter.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
while the limitations aren't legacy related, there are limitations abound in Itanium's architecture.
Apparently, in Oracle World, being a dick to your customers (what Oracle is doing to its paying-early-and-often customers) is so normal, that they see being good your customers, even at some expense is an "accusation".
In sum
Oracle: HP is a bunch of douche bags, because they aren't as big assholes as we are. Come to us. You know you want it, you, you mewling girly men.
It's not about better and faster servers, it's about Oracle no longer selling their database software products for Itanium. Given your arguments, Oracle has every right to stop selling their software to run on competitors systems.
... oh, no, the customers are the ones paying for all this drama.
For some reason, HP seems to think there are contracts obliging Oracle to keep selling and supporting their database software products for Itanium and Oracle seems to think they have no obligation, since Itanium would be dead and buried if HP wasn't secretly paying Intel money to keep it alive. This would render the contract invalid in Oracles view. The key here seems to be that if HP had to pay Intel to not kill Itanium, Oracle has no obligation to keep supporting it. Probably they mean HP should pay Oracle a large sum of "secret money" as well to render them the same services they allegedly bought from Intel.
Don't we all just love these vendor lock-in disputes? Everybody makes money out of them, the companies, the lawyers and
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I'm in the power industry. We have some applications that are only built in Solaris, HP-UX or AIX due to the underlying Cobol code, etc.
If we want to maintain certain regs, or have access to certain markets, we have to keep this particular app.
The day Oracle crapped on Itanium, we had to get HP in to tell us what the plan was as it would take us a few years to migrate to AIX if HP was really dumping it. (there is no way in hell we're running Oracle on a (now) Oracle operating system). Talk about vendor lock in. Woof.
Since then, I have been provided HP-UX and Itanium roadmaps for a ways out. (under NDA so no more details than that)
If Oracle wins on this, and really does dump UX, then I need to bring a bunch of AIX gear in and put a team of developers to work porting our custom code which means no optimization, no rewrites, no efficiency. All of our work to improve security, and kill off bugs will be wasted as we get it barely working in a new environment before we lose support. Just in case we get a nuclear project, etc.
The thought of training hundreds of people in a new system at multiple power plants and dozens of substations alone makes me nauseous. But if we screw up the migration process and wreck compliance, we could be out of business as the fines are incredible.
I'll bet half of this could have been avoided if when Hurd was found screwing around at HP, they could have just had him executed. Then he wouldn't be at Oracle and probably influencing this situation quite a bit.
My mom says I'm cool.
Whoosh
-- Flame me and I will happily flame you back. Bring it!
Just curious- why the Caiaphas quote from John 11?
Past four years, we are using itanium server for our financial application..... On production server.. The software based on php and mysql quite stable so as on dual core laptop or core 2 duo............ When moved to itanium server,we started to have lot of weird problem.And the worst it very slow........... My suggestion Don't ever used this proc .Used xeon instead much faster..
I hate to say this, but Double Whoosh!
just cuz you say "double woosh" doesn't make it a double woosh. it just puts more woosh on you.
-- Flame me and I will happily flame you back. Bring it!
Oracle agreed under contract to support this platform on their products. They got good valuable consideration for that. Now they don't want to hold up their end. Well that's too bad. A deal is a deal.
I have no pity for either HP or Intel on this one - they're taking a bath with Itanic, as some of us said they would 7 years ago and more. But at least they're not having to be sued to keep their promises.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
As far as I understand, customers always pay companies to keep product alive. Are they saying HP pays more per CPU than the price of a single order in retail? My bet is on a significant volume discount.
...Is that there was some way that all corporations involved in this thing could suffer irreparable harm from this.
No, not just cuz he saiz it, but that doesn't make it less true. It's either a double woosh, or no woosh at all (and GGGP was just only insightful).
Well if I was in another manufacturing company contracted with Oracle I'd be start thinking would I be breaking my contract by shovelling a bit of money to the free alternatives so my customers don't get locked in with Oracle. After all Oracle might find some such other such reason of equal validity for not supporting them.
thou discernest my thoughts from afar
Or in other words, FUCK YOU, Oracle!
It would be interesting to look at the actualsupport commitment clause. If they just committed to "supporting" the architecture Oracle could just keep shipping bugfixes and security fixes, but develop new versions for x64 and Sparc only. If HP's lawyers were good they probably put in something about preferred platform or at least as well as any other processor, so Oracle would be screwed.
Since both sides are still pushing this rather than settling, the contract probably specifies something in the middle. Like Oracle has to keep supporting Itanium as long as it's a commercially viable platform, which would be dabatable.
I actually did a while back, and it was one of the most frustrating jobs I've ever worked.
I admit that I am biased, but I do really hope that company crashes and burns.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Just before Oracle bought SUN then HP was a "strategic partner". Customers would buy bunch of HP servers + oracle databases and both companys were making money and happy. Then Oracle buys SUN, Mark Hurd gets fired, And Larry is mad that those big database customers just won't migrate to their platform....
HP: Mommy Court, Oracle hit me!
Oracle: Nuh uh, and they hit me first
Seriously though, I blame Microsoft.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Please Google:
IBM detained mother of ex-employee on the day of centennial
or
How Much IBM Can Get Away with is the Responsibility of the Media
or
Tragedy of Labor Rights Repression in IBM China
or
IBM Advised to Treat its People with Humanism in China
Still hasn't started transitioning their HP-UX, Nonstop, etc customers to something else. It generally takes a generation or two before all the lagards get on board a new arch. Heck, HP was still selling PA-RISC machines a couple years ago, long past the point where it was apparent the itanic was a dead end.
It seems that HP is intended to keep forcing intel to make the itanium forever, but they have to have a fallback plan. The question is, does HP want to pay for full development of a chip so complex it takes 10x the manpower to design for, or are they going to bring back something like PA-RISC or Alpha that goes fast, without to much effort. Their only other alternatives seem to be jumping on the x86 or POWER bandwagon. I might included sparc, but outside of fujitsu, that seems pretty dead too.
How can it be that they "make money from its locked-in Itanium customers" and also "take business away from" anybody? This is a contradiction. The conclusion does not follow from the facts. If you have locked in users you are not stealing new business away from anyone. By paying higher prices for a processor that nobody else wants, the cost to the current users just goes up accordingly. They can only be preventing someone else from taking away the current business that is already "locked-in" but not yet willing to pay the price to move to another technology. Oracles' problem seems to be that there is some "business" going on out there that does not belong to them, and they don't like it that way.
The benchmark today is 3.0GHz Interlagos processors with 16 cores per socket, up to 4 sockets per motherboard, for a total of 64 AMD64 cores per node at 3GHz in 2U, or 1.5x better in blades. And of course GPGPU on top of that. Itanic may have some internal efficiencies, but it can't compete against that compute per RU on any benchmark I know of.
It's got some resilience, but frankly we've moved that feature to software. It's got some scalability, but FDR Infiniband is solving that problem too.
Itanic is toast. The clock doesn't ramp, and we knew that seven years ago - it was provable then, and it's proven now.
HP and Intel will bring out new chips for a few years because they promised to. It's a losing proposition now, but they promised and a deal's a deal. By eating some losses here HP and Intel gain some trust in the enterprise market where they have other products to sell, so it maths out financially.
Help stamp out iliturcy.