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Is HP Paying Intel To Keep Itanium Alive?

Posted by Unknown on from the larry-ellison-has-no-reflection dept.

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."

31 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. Support by CmdrPony · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Support by shri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree with this wholeheartedly. It is a commercial agreement to prolong support and development of a component that is vital to HP's line up. Is the Itanium not available to Oracle to use in its lineup of servers?

    2. Re:Support by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I completely agree. Itanium was a boondoggle years before it shipped. But if you were stupid enough to buy into all the marketing, at least HP hasn't just abandoned you. Better to have the choice to leave than to be pushed off. Besides, nowadays the Itaniums suck much less than the first couple of generations did.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    3. Re:Support by Lord_Jeremy · · Score: 5, Informative

      HP's lawsuit against Oracle was that Oracle had agreed under contract to support the Itanium architecture for a certain period of time. It's the breach of contract that is the problem.

    4. Re:Support by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What is wrong with a software publisher saying they will stop supporting a hardware platform in a future release? Redhat and Microsoft also dropped support for Itanium.

      They are not just a software publisher. They have near monopoly levels of control on the big-iron database market and they are using it to leverage their otherwise anemic hardware platform. Whether that rises to the level of "tying" that is considered anti-competitive is for the courts to determine.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    5. Re:Support by TWX · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's probably more that Oracle doesn't want to support Itanium anymore, but I'm guessing that so long as Itanium is viable they're stuck supporting contracts that they have with HP. HP is in the middle of suing Oracle for their declared end of support for Itanium products. If Intel continues to make Itanium at HP's behest, that might leave Oracle on the spot.

      Sucks to be Oracle's contracts department, but that's what happens when one doesn't write in a good escape clause. It probably legally doesn't really matter why Intel is still supporting the Itanium line, because I'd bet that Oracle never saw this one coming, but since Oracle is a third party to Intel and HP's business dealings as far as the contracts between the two, there's probably not a lot more than complaining that they can do.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    6. Re:Support by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      no monopoly, plenty of other big-iron databases besides Oracle around. DB2 is the real big-iron database, costs less, scales bigger (on Unix to over 100 servers, on mainframes to 32 data sharing groups, each one can be made of multiple MVS systems), performs better

    7. Re:Support by pjr.cc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Aside from the fact that the flow-on consequence is that oracle then needs to develop the ia64 oracle side - I still cant see why oracle think this is something worth even mentioning.

      HP paid intel to keep making a chip HP uses - OH FOR SHAME! Or is the big thing about it the "secret" bit cause well, contracts like that do tend to be rather "sensitive".

      But "oracle whinges cause HP tries to keep its IA64 customer base from moving to oracle servers" just sounds kinda ridiculous. Even reading the article is really not helping me get the problem oracle are trying to get at here. It reads like:

      Oracle to HP: We would like to steal your customers please
      HP to Oracle: Um, no thanks?
      Oracle to HP: HAH, NO ITANIUM FOR YOU!
      HP to Oracle: im sorry, but see this piece of paper says you cant do that

      Meanwhile at the HP cave:
      HP to Intel: heres some cash to continue IA64 development work
      Intel to HP: Sure, no problem, we'll make silicon for you, we do that.

      Meanwhile back at the Oracle Cave:
      Oracle to Universe: WAAAAH HP WONT LET US STEAL THEIR CUSTOMERS.
      *much thumb sucking ensues*

      Now if HP had pain intel to stop making the IA64 to gimp dell (or someone else) for instance, then sure thats worth mentioning.

    8. Re:Support by wisty · · Score: 4, Funny

      DB2 is the best big-iron database, and MS-SQL is the best big-iron database for people who don't really like databases.

      I guess that leaves Oracle as the database for people who like databases, but not too much. The Mitsubishi Lancer of databases, as it were.

    9. Re:Support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      here you go

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Citation

    10. Re:Support by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Informative

      Question: How EXACTLY could the Itanic have been a very nice processor? Because everything i've read about the thing boils down to the entire arch was built so that it required this mythical "super compiler" that could optimize the code much better than even doing it by hand to constantly keep the long pipes fed and Intel didn't bother to actually HAVE such a compiler before shipping and in fact was never able to produce one. this of course was followed by AMD wisely capitalizing on its competitor's mistake and going for X64, thus taking out the last major selling point of Itanic which was the 64 bit registers and memory addresses (without having to use hacks like PAE that is).

      So from where i'm sitting it looked like another Netburst, doomed from the start. Even the wiki says "Only a few thousand systems using the original Merced Itanium processor were sold, due to relatively poor performance, high cost and limited software availability." So right out the gate you had a chip that cost too much, delivered too little, and of course by abandoning X86 really didn't have squat to run on it. i honestly don't see how a chip that comes limping out the gate like that could be anything BUT a dead end.

      If it would have delivered the performance (Athlon64, Core) or been revolutionary in price per watt or in price period (ARM) then i could agree with you. but at least from where I'm sitting Itanic was Intel's way of trying to get everyone on the planet to throw out their systems and start all over again, while at the same time being able to lock competition in the way of AMD out of the market and it failed. Given that we would be looking most likely at an Intel only world right now if it hadn't i think we should be grateful its toast.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    11. Re:Support by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      But to quote the great and powerful Chewbacca defense 'it makes NO sense!" If HP DID have such a contract, why not produce it when their stock started to nosedive? showing the world it had old larry by the nuts and was suing him would have caused the stock to CLIMB yes? And if oracle DID sign such a contract why even go into court knowing all HP has to do is produce the contract and that's their ass? it makes NO sense!

      The ONLY way i can see this making sense is if HP has NO contract like that with oracle and they are on the hook with supporting itanium. Then lying their asses off and stretching it out in court makes perfect sense as they are trying to keep from getting sued by those people who were sold these supercomputers that aren't gonna be able to run dick when oracle walks away.

      If someone else can explain how it makes sense any other way please do, but I've been scratching my noggin over this for the past half hour and it just doesn't add up the other way, at least not for me.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    12. Re:Support by Anthony+Mouse · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I hate to start any conspiracy theories, but look at it from Intel's perspective. Intel likes a good skunkworks project. Try something new, if it pans out you make a mint, if not, well, cost of doing business. Take the tax deduction. (Incidentally, that is where the Core architecture came from. Israeli design team making improvements to the old P6, never expecting to need it outside of maybe laptops.)

      So they come up with this crazy VLIW idea and realize it will cost a ton of money. At the same time, they can convince HP to transition away from their existing RISC architectures (PA-RISC and Alpha) and in so doing get them to pay a big chunk of the R&D costs. Then, if it works out, great! Intel is now the sole supplier of Itanium chips for HP's high end servers. And if it fails, great! Two more non-Intel RISC architectures dead and out of competition with x86, and Intel gets HP to pay half the cost of their own execution.

      And at that point, once Intel is in the position where success or failure doesn't matter to them because they sell the same number of chips whether they're Itanium or x86, success becomes the more expensive option. Why keep developing new models of Itanic when you've already got a Xeon that is better in every significant way?

    13. Re:Support by JDG1980 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Compilers aren't rocket science.

      Indeed not. They are far more complicated than that.

    14. Re:Support by Guy+Harris · · Score: 5, Informative

      So they come up with this crazy VLIW idea

      Who's "they"? Intel, or HP?

      and realize it will cost a ton of money.

      Which, as I understand it, is why HP partnered with Intel (not the other way around).

      At the same time, they can convince HP to transition away from their existing RISC architectures (PA-RISC

      Which, as I understand it, was HP's intent even before they got Intel involved.

      and Alpha)

      Which was, at the time the HP-Intel partnership was announced, DEC's RISC architecture - DEC hadn't even been bought by Compaq yet, much less Compaq bought by HP.

    15. Re:Support by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Another problem was Intel making their own compiler instead of improving gcc

      Intel did improve GCC, although GCC at the time of the Itanium release was completely useless at optimisation. Modern GCC is still a joke at optimisation compared even to something like Open64, and Itanium needs more effort than any other target architecture, yet gets far less manpower because no one cares about it. LLVM dropped the Itanium back end a few months ago because no one wanted to maintain it (and the few people who might have been vaguely interested didn't have access to the hardware).

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Maybe Oracle should do something useful, period. by intellitech · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  3. Que? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  4. And the villain here is...Oracle! by swordgeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "...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
    1. Re:And the villain here is...Oracle! by iggymanz · · Score: 5, Informative

      You mean code to prevent it from running on Ultrasparcs IV+ and anything earlier: http://lildude.co.uk/solaris-11-end-of-support-for-legacy-hardware

      kind of surprising as many customer plan for more than 7 years with large Unix servers, IV+ was introduced in 2005.

  5. Contract fab? by phil+reed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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."
  6. In other news... by Anubis350 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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
  7. Re:Just sell Intel's Itanium division to HP by the+linux+geek · · Score: 5, Informative

    The thing is, other vendors are using it. Huawei and Inspur announced they're developing new Itanium machines earlier this year; Hitachi and Mitsubishi resell HP's machines. NEC and Bull also use Itanium to run their proprietary ACOS and GCOS mainframe operating systems. I think these vendors would probably get pissy if HP got exclusive control of the architecture.

  8. A few things... by the+linux+geek · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  9. Uh, what? by pclminion · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  10. And history repeats itself... by mschaffer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  11. Also turns out Itanium is good at some things by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  12. So Oracle admits they were lying? by pavon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  13. Re:Maybe Oracle should do something useful, period by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  14. HP-UX / Oracle / Itanium user here. by attemptedgoalie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  15. Re:Maybe Oracle should do something useful, period by symbolset · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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