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Itani-what?: Merced is Renamed
Anonymous Freak writes "Well, Intel has finally decided on a name for the first IA-64 processor. The processor formerly known as Merced is now called "Itanium". Boy, and I thought "Pentium" was a silly name when it first came out." Itanium - the mind boggles. Forget this - I'm still calling it Merced - although Itanium is targeted "at the Internet Economy" according to the press release *gag*.
You know how this name happened, btw. Some moron just misspelled the name of a lightweight metal.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Silly me. I thought Sparcs and Alphas were the Internet processors. I mean, don't most of the 'real' websites run on them?
Well bell my cat - it was Intel all along!
Gawd, how much did Intel pay a marketing company for that clunker of a name?
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
"throatwobbler mangrove"
(You're a very silly corporation and I'm not going to interview you!" "Oh please?")
I looked all over the Intel press releases, and have yet to find a corporate sponsored pronunciation for the 'Itanium'. So here are a few of my suggestions.
1. Titanicium
2. Itty-bittium
3. Icantium
4. iWhackium
5. Inferorium
6. I'm sorry!
7. Yes, we are on something!
8. Merced
.sig: Now legally binding!
"muinati" - much classier.
Or, with a bit of help from an anagram generator:
mini tau
I am unit
Hmmm... the first sounds like it's from Austin Powers, the second from Star Trek.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
unobtanium - cause you cant get one
vaporium - cause it is all just hot air
subathlonium - cause even with the extra 32 bits, it is still slower than athlon
bankruptium - what it is gonna do for intel
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
The fact that it sounds somewhat like some obscure sort of "rare earth" metal is likely good for Intel; they can have some e1eete k001 commercials involving glowing metallic substances, not unlike one of Nokia's latest that shows off a chrome-bright cell phone rather than those boring old black ones. Itanium can provide us the burning chrome approach...
This also provides a natural progression towards jokes involving the Hacker's Dictionary definition for "Chrome" which caused great hilarity when Microsoft announced Microsoft Chrome which not only conformed to the "useless but pretty" definition of Chrome, but actually used the same word to describe it. In effect, Itanium is Really Fancy Chrome!
It's a nice bonus that the name leaves it to minor modifications of a scatalogical nature so as to allow Further Jokes. If the chip is rectangular, the next PPC commercial will doubtless show off a burned-up shrivelled-up, brown Itanium chip, leaving any comparisons to other materials to be filled in by the viewer...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I think it's a newly discovered highly radioactive element. Naturally, heavy elements of this sort are highly unstable and will decay in a matter of nanoseconds at best.
Perhaps it really is a fitting name for this new chip after all?
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
I ntel
T ries
A lternate
N ame --
I t's
U nbelievable
M arketing!
% whois itanium.com
...
Registrant:
Intel Corporation (ITANIUM-DOM)
2200 Mission College Blvd
M/S SC4-203
Santa Clara, CA 95052-8119
Domain Name: ITANIUM.COM
... snip
Record last updated on 01-Oct-98.
Record created on 01-Oct-98.
Record created 01-Oct-98? Have they really been planning on naming the ship "itanium" for ONE YEAR? You would have thought that they would have been able to come up with a better name in a *year's* time. Or at least though better of it...
Ack.
My word processor was written by Stanford Professor Donald Knuth. Who wrote yours?
(i786? Wouldn't that be Willamette? The Pentium III, and the Xeon Warrior Princess flavors of the PII/PIII, are based on the same P6 CPU core, so I'd think of them as i686's.)
I suspect Intel decided to use Pentium as the brand name for (all but the lower-end) IA-32 processors, preserving brand equity or whatever the hell the marketoon term is; I wouldn't be surprised to see McKinley be the Itanium II or something such as that.
WTF is the "Internet Economy" and how do you "target" a chip at it?
Hmmm... Internet Economy... well, let's see. What does a normal computer chip do that you don't need to stare at webpages? Hmmm... Floating point math! This is clearly just a marketing doublespeak way of saying:
Sort of like a Pentium.Even more interesting is going to be the Intel marketing. How does one market such a wretched sounding name? Are they planning on selling this as a mixture of the Internet and the Pentium? Well, geeh, that's great. As if the Pentium did not already have enough privacy problems.
Hmmm... Now all they need is a nice jingle...
Lacking germanium, we made it out of wild geranium,
Nullifying your privacy to a symposium!
Itanium, it sounds like titanium!
Itanium, it's less stable than uranium!
Itanium, the only chip built in a gymnasium,
Sending it strait to a crematorium!
Itanium, it sounds like titanium!
Itanium, it's less stable than uranium!
Itanium, it's giving our lawyers a honorarium,
You'd rather have Cryptosporidium!
Itanium, it sounds like titanium!
Itanium, it's less stable than uranium!
I would love to see that on an Intel commercial!
ludicronym, n. - A ludicrous nonsense name given to a product for marketing purposes.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You're all missing the point. The story was posted in 3-D Stereo, but you need an Itanium chip and special glasses to view it correctly.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Is it studleyCapped as iTanium? Can we have a uTanium? A weTanium for SMP systems? Will aPple sue them for putting the letter "i" in front of nonsense?
I guess if DS9 can c/Platinum/Latinum/, Intel can do the same to it's own products. What the hell was wrong with "Merced", anyway?
--
This is not my sandwich.
Barrons had an interesting piece on Intel this week, entitled "Intel NOT Inside."
In that article as well, Intel claimed that it was targeting the internet economy. The implied reasoning was that the profit ratio is about the same on the $500 chips as the $100 Celeron, so they're about five times as lucrative. The article estimates that one server-class machine is needed for every ten consumer machines on the Internet.
If consumer hardware is getting cheaper while server hardware is staying steady or even advancing in cost, we can see where the safe money's going to be for Intel.
Given the above, and the article's further declaration that Intel has already made/is trying to make further inroads into the embedded controller market where switches, hubs, etc are concerned, we can determine that Internet Economy is obscure jargon for the Internet server and networking hardware market.
--
My question for Intel is whether it's prudent to explicitly remove emphasis from lower end systems (if that's what they truly intend). By Intel's admission, the $100 chips still make the same percentage profit. Wouldn't it make more sense to get on the ball and start pushing Microsoft and game developers to make use of SMP in consumer products, and to then push its low-end SMP-capable processors?
Imagine the benefit to Intel (and us) if they let companies continue to make these sub-$1000-PCs, but if each had 3 spaces free for candy-colored $200 cartridge with another processor and a bit of RAM inside. Average consumers can finally buy that PC that lasts them 5 years, and Intel still gets (eventually) the full price of a server-class chip when people finally upgrade. (And I'll wager quite a few will if they can do it in sub $200 increments!)
Scary... but sensible too.
Itanium reminds me Volkswagen's "Turbonium", which despite Intel's best effort, is still much stupider.
I don't know what's worse... Volkswagen advertising its new car by showing it spinning like a top or Intel advertising a computer chip as making the Internet better, as if moire processing speed means better bandwidth (or disk I/O, which we all know is the real performance bottleneck!)
Marketing seems to be getting stupider and stupider.
Rick (happy with a 200MHz PPro)
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Ooh Boy,
the mind reels with potential Shakespearean references, here. I wonder if the next generation will be called the "Oberon"? Or if they will just cut the crap and show us their "Bottom"
Or will they market this turkey with a "DS9" flair as a Ferengi invention and expect people to bid on 'em with bars of Latanum.
I'm getting a G4 chip based box and I'll have gigaflop rather than a marketing-flop.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
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Aaron
"Pentium" I kind of like as a name, but Itanium? It doesn't quite roll off the tongue. I guess I understand AMD thinking "K7" isn't a very marketable name, but "Merced" sounds pretty snappy to me. I guess marketing has convinced them that they *have* to make up a name for their products to avoid trademark hassles.
pity. Not that I like Intel much, but...pity.
--Lenny
Your Servant, B. Baggins
One thing's for sure, "Itanium" sticks out. It's so bizarre that it *has* to become a household word, which is exactly what intel wants.
I think I can extrapolate some future Intel chip names based on their previous track record:
2002: The Itanium II is introduced, with new AMI (Advanced Marketing Instructions) Technology(tm)
late 2002: A low-cost version of the Itanium core comes out, called either "Asparagon" or "Vidalion"
2004: Itanium III (duh)
late 2005: Intel's first 128-bit CPU is announced, which will be named Delirium.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
It's probably going to go for $3-5000 a pop. It's not geared at the desktop right now, err when it appears, but at the servers.... YOU don't want a Merced system when it comes out, unless it's for your department. Nor do I... But wait a few years to get the kinks out and for more and more applications to be ported to it. As the apps come, I reckon the price will drop because more and more people will have an actual reason to buy the chip
After the incredibly annoying You-Must-Have-A-Pentium-III-To-Enjoy-The-Internet (despite your inability to actually find any sites that look even remotely as processor intensive as the ones in the commercial, that looked more like CAD/CAM), can you imagine the advertisements for the Intanium, which is NAMED after the darned network?
"Intanium: This One Will Actually Enhance Your Internet Experience, Honestly!"
"Intanium: If You Thought The 32-Bit Internet Was Great, Wait Until You See The 64-Bit Internet!"
"Intanium: Databases Will Commit Transactions Like Never Before."
You do have to look at it from Intel Marketing's point of view... how do you hype "Do Things Faster" when that's been your line for the last 20 years and is, apparently, wearing thin with the management.
Still, I can think of a campaign targetting the slashdot crowd that would work well:
"Intanium: Have A Computer More Powerful Then Most Servers You Visit!"
Now that, that just sings to me, baby!
intelsucks.net
intelsucks.org
xeonisslow.com
xeonisslow.net
xeonisslow.org
mmxsucks.com
etc...
etc...
I though I heard it was a trend of company's to register their name or product and sucks as in "xxxsucks.com" if only to not let other people take those sights and do something with them.
-----
By the way, if you moderate me down, you obviously have no sense of self... or humor....
It's straight out of Voyager...
"Captain Janeway, we have no choice but to go around this solar system, it is contaminated with dangerous levels of itanium radiation from the Moron's toxic waste dump."
"No, Seven, that would add days to our trip back home. We can enhance the shields with that alien technology we conveniently picked up at the Spinwise Central Delta Quadrant trade show and job fair last week."
"That is efficient, but is the level of risk acceptable?"
"What's the worst that can happen? If the shields fail we'll have an excuse for the writers to forget about it in future episodes. At worst we'll lose a shuttle craft and a couple of extras."
"Very well, I will connect the alien technology to our deflector grid. It should only take a few hours despite the fact that we have no interfaces or protocols in common."
Completed in the year 1999, the good chip Itanium set sail for the new world. They said it couldn't crash, that new technology made it invincible.
However, late one night the ill-fated CPU struck a large 32-bit instruction floating somewhere in the "Internet information economy" which ripped a large hole in her stack and damaged her bus. With the cache on fire, the order was made to abandon chip.
Luckily a nearby chip, the SS Athlon was able to support all of the Itanium's users and no lives were lost.
Except for that damn Leo DiCaprio who exploded.
Hotnutz.com