The x86 was never used on itanium ? crap. Sure ist was ( and I assume is ) used - for the firmware. IIRC, the EFI-firmware of the Itanium boxen was entirely x86. They use the x86-ISA for running the x86-based firmware of add-on cards. That way, Itanium boxen are able to use about any PCI-card out there, without them having any special firmware. Alphas did that in software, which mostly worked but far from working with everthing. SPARCs and the PowerPC-based Apples have PCI, but neither is able to handle standard PCI-cards for exacty that reason, which is why you have to shrug off $$$ to get the same PCI-hardware with their native firmware support.
Ok, any PCI-card stuffed in an Itanium box would need decent OS-drivers, but at least that is in the realm of the OS-vendor and drivers can be ported. Only very few PCI HW-manufacturers ever did anything but x86 firmware, geared towards BIOS.
EFI, the firmware that ships with Itaniums, is quite good at handling that crappy PC-BIOS type firmware. Need a decent RAID-controller ? Just stuff it in.
I'd call that a big plus. There are and have been numerous misconceptions about Itanium from the very beginning, but saying "Nobody needs on-chip x86" is utterly stupid.
IIRC, the chip "real-estate" needed for x86 was in the lowish single-digit percentage of the total chip-real estate. And it was a good investment, since it saves $$$ for anybody running Itaniums. It was there for exactly that purpose, until some marketing freak obviously decided to sell that as "backwards compatibility". x86 on Itanium was and is dead slow, but for POST/Init purposes, it is sufficient.
Please, intel, keep it. If Itanium is ever going to be a success, users will happily welcome the ability to extend systems using standard off-the-shelf components.
And, while we are at it, start shipping EFI for the "x86-crowd" now. I think, i am not alone with the perception, that hitting "CTRL-S", "ESC whatsoever" at the right moment during POST to enter some firmware configuration tool of some card, just plain sucks.
I want a firmware shell. I want x86-style SRM. EFI is close to that. Intel even open-sourced major parts of EFI ( www.tianocore.org ). AFAIK, the Intel-based Apples will use it. I want it too.
I did the "convert" recently. Here's the ( true ) story:
I became involved in computers in 1977, when a friend of my dad gave him the "SDK-85" which was intels 8085 SBC development-kit at that time. I soldered it all together and had "a computer" - whatever that was - at the age of 13 ( note, that i am german, so at the age of 13, hardware manuals where not *that* easy on me;-).
I moved to the US in 1980, getting in contact with the infamous Apple ][ ( I just *had* to write it that way;-), which got me *really* started.
Went back to Germany 1981, got myself a Sharp MZ80K ( yes, at that time, being in Germany ment 3 years behind in IT-technology... ). After an Apple-][ clone in 1982, a PC-clone, amiga 2000 and atari-ST quickly followed. My first contact with UNIX was 1984 at my university, were I went for
computer science. Good Hooked (TM) immediately. Not, that UNIX only got a high-level language compiler+editor+utils in the base system by default, if also got shell-level prgrammability built-in. A revolution to me.
I became a Unix-addict ever since, never looked at other things. ( Bot even VMS, which was quite popular - for good reasons - during my "high time" ).
I've been a "professional" since 1989, going through various UNIX-dialects, starting my own company in 1994 on HyperSPARC and Solaris. Went quite good. Been a consultant since 2000, fairly successful since then.
I have never been biased towards Microsoft, since I *never* got in touch with their software products ever since. Remotely DOS ( Turbo-Pascal ) for one single project during my school/student time. I knew of course, what windows was all about, read a lot, saw some in private space with the guys i hung out with, but really never touched it.
Now, this is 2006.
Last year ( we all recall 2005... ), my girlfriend "claimed" my old notebook for her personal use ( online-shops, ebay,... you probably know what i mean ).
At that time, i had my first day using ( installing ) windows on *any* machine ( Compaq M300 ), and at the very next day, i was "hijacked" by my dad, configuring windows XP on his new Acer Centrino Laptop.
Following My Path(TM) to computers, it obviously went weird. With the Acer Laptop, any Idiot could get the machine up and running in literally no time. Microsoft keeps the promise there.
The machine came preinstalled with some version of Win XP ( don't ask - i don't recall ), but finishing the install and customizing it, as automatic and/or easy.
With the M300, which got Win2000 - which it apperantly was desinged for - it was a bit trickier. No problem either, since HP ( ex-compaq ) has a good website on these "legacy hardware".
At that point, Windows was installed on both machines, all ( yes, all - i found visiting MS-sites numerous times puzzeling ) patches were installed.
For reasons not to be explained, i have a fairly strict setup.wrt. firewalling, in order to get to my machines. Windows - out of the box - was unable to cope with "some parts" of my network.
That was the point, were the adventure started. To cut a long story short, i gained the impression, that windows was in *DEEP* *TROUBLE*, once you took it beyond the stuff, you could do with the GUI configuration.
Second, once you learned some "mystic trick" from some Win-Guru, you were mostly safe.
However, here are my $0.02 of admin-"issues", i've found in windows:
1. no way of doing "tail -f "
essential for admins.
2. No way of hand-crafted scripting through boot-up ( No/etc/init.d/ whatsoever )
3. No GUI display redirection. Your GUI config sucks ? start an xterm remotely, go watch/var/log/messages et al.
4. although i have found *excellent* documentation on microsoft.com, much of it is hidden behind MS-isms - stick to "standard naming of standard problems" here.
Conclusion: MS - stick to standards. No real news here.
Unix-addictsP: read the docs first - some is good, some is crap.
just my $0.02
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There are of course PCI cards without any firmware at all. Those obviously don't care about the arch, they are being plugged in.
;-)
By sheer conincidence, those are the ones that:
1. Get integrated on mainboards anyway ( Networking, USB )
2. are the cheapest
Graphics boards, RAID-controllers and the like are a completely different story.
( No, I am not talking promise style 1.5-channel IDE-raids here
Cheers
The x86 was never used on itanium ? crap.
Sure ist was ( and I assume is ) used - for the firmware. IIRC, the EFI-firmware of the Itanium boxen was entirely x86. They use the x86-ISA for running the x86-based firmware of add-on cards. That way, Itanium boxen are able to use about any PCI-card out there, without
them having any special firmware.
Alphas did that in software, which mostly worked but far from working with everthing.
SPARCs and the PowerPC-based Apples have PCI, but neither is able to handle standard
PCI-cards for exacty that reason, which is why you have to shrug off $$$ to get the same
PCI-hardware with their native firmware support.
Ok, any PCI-card stuffed in an Itanium box would need decent OS-drivers, but at least
that is in the realm of the OS-vendor and drivers can be ported. Only very few
PCI HW-manufacturers ever did anything but x86 firmware, geared towards BIOS.
EFI, the firmware that ships with Itaniums, is quite good at handling that crappy
PC-BIOS type firmware. Need a decent RAID-controller ? Just stuff it in.
I'd call that a big plus. There are and have been numerous misconceptions about Itanium
from the very beginning, but saying "Nobody needs on-chip x86" is utterly stupid.
IIRC, the chip "real-estate" needed for x86 was in the lowish single-digit percentage
of the total chip-real estate. And it was a good investment, since it saves $$$ for
anybody running Itaniums. It was there for exactly that purpose, until some marketing
freak obviously decided to sell that as "backwards compatibility". x86 on Itanium was
and is dead slow, but for POST/Init purposes, it is sufficient.
Please, intel, keep it. If Itanium is ever going to be a success, users will happily
welcome the ability to extend systems using standard off-the-shelf components.
And, while we are at it, start shipping EFI for the "x86-crowd" now. I think, i am not
alone with the perception, that hitting "CTRL-S", "ESC whatsoever" at the right moment
during POST to enter some firmware configuration tool of some card, just plain sucks.
I want a firmware shell. I want x86-style SRM. EFI is close to that. Intel even
open-sourced major parts of EFI ( www.tianocore.org ). AFAIK, the Intel-based Apples
will use it. I want it too.
For gods sake, keep x86 in Itaniums.
Regards
I did the "convert" recently. Here's the ( true ) story: I became involved in computers in 1977, when a friend of my dad gave him the "SDK-85" which was intels 8085 SBC development-kit at that time. I soldered it all together and had "a computer" - whatever that was - at the age of 13 ( note, that i am german, so at the age of 13, hardware manuals where not *that* easy on me ;-).
I moved to the US in 1980, getting in contact with the infamous Apple ][ ( I just *had* to write it that way ;-), which got me *really* started.
Went back to Germany 1981, got myself a Sharp MZ80K ( yes, at that time, being in Germany ment 3 years behind in IT-technology ... ). After an Apple-][ clone in 1982, a PC-clone, amiga 2000 and atari-ST quickly followed. My first contact with UNIX was 1984 at my university, were I went for
computer science. Good Hooked (TM) immediately. Not, that UNIX only got a high-level language compiler+editor+utils in the base system by default, if also got shell-level prgrammability built-in. A revolution to me.
I became a Unix-addict ever since, never looked at other things. ( Bot even VMS, which was quite popular - for good reasons - during my "high time" ).
I've been a "professional" since 1989, going through various UNIX-dialects, starting my own company in 1994 on HyperSPARC and Solaris. Went quite good. Been a consultant since 2000, fairly successful since then.
I have never been biased towards Microsoft, since I *never* got in touch with their software products ever since. Remotely DOS ( Turbo-Pascal ) for one single project during my school/student time. I knew of course, what windows was all about, read a lot, saw some in private space with the guys i hung out with, but really never touched it.
Now, this is 2006.
Last year ( we all recall 2005 ... ), my girlfriend "claimed" my old notebook for her personal use ( online-shops, ebay, ... you probably know what i mean ).
At that time, i had my first day using ( installing ) windows on *any* machine ( Compaq M300 ), and at the very next day, i was "hijacked" by my dad, configuring windows XP on his new Acer Centrino Laptop.
Following My Path(TM) to computers, it obviously went weird. With the Acer Laptop, any Idiot could get the machine up and running in literally no time. Microsoft keeps the promise there.
The machine came preinstalled with some version of Win XP ( don't ask - i don't recall ), but finishing the install and customizing it, as automatic and/or easy.
With the M300, which got Win2000 - which it apperantly was desinged for - it was a bit trickier. No problem either, since HP ( ex-compaq ) has a good website on these "legacy hardware".
At that point, Windows was installed on both machines, all ( yes, all - i found visiting MS-sites numerous times puzzeling ) patches were installed.
For reasons not to be explained, i have a fairly strict setup .wrt. firewalling, in order to get to my machines. Windows - out of the box - was unable to cope with "some parts" of my network.
That was the point, were the adventure started. To cut a long story short, i gained the impression, that windows was in *DEEP* *TROUBLE*, once you took it beyond the stuff, you could do with the GUI configuration.
Second, once you learned some "mystic trick" from some Win-Guru, you were mostly safe.
However, here are my $0.02 of admin-"issues", i've found in windows:
1. no way of doing "tail -f "
essential for admins.
2. No way of hand-crafted scripting through boot-up ( No /etc/init.d/ whatsoever )
3. No GUI display redirection. Your GUI config sucks ? start an xterm remotely, go watch /var/log/messages et al.
4. although i have found *excellent* documentation on microsoft.com, much of it is hidden behind MS-isms - stick to "standard naming of standard problems" here.
Conclusion: MS - stick to standards. No real news here.
Unix-addictsP: read the docs first - some is good, some is crap.
just my $0.02