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Intel Itanium IA-64 Support Removed with the Linux 6.7 Kernel

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Re: Intel Itanium IA-64 Support Removed with the Linux 6.7 Kernel

#41

Post by kstrauser »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #29
jabl wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end it was market forces that did it in. Making new chips was (still is!) exponentially more expensive for each generation, and at the same time mass market chips were getting better and better while they could amortize the NRE costs over zillions of chips sold, eating the market from below. And other RISC competitors (and IA-64) were attacking from the sides. DEC just didn't have the customer base or depth of…

In my limited understanding two factors contributed significantly to Alpha failing. Business-wise, DEC and Ken Olesen were stuck in an old minicomputer mentality and wasn't sufficiently able or willing to "let it loose" and let it take over the market with DEC as the CPU supplier. Technically, Alpha development was taking longer and longer and the schedule slips got worse and worse.

If the business end had kept the cash rolling in, do you think the technical side could have kept to schedule?

Re: Intel Itanium IA-64 Support Removed with the Linux 6.7 Kernel

#42

Post by GrilledChips »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #29
jabl wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end it was market forces that did it in. Making new chips was (still is!) exponentially more expensive for each generation, and at the same time mass market chips were getting better and better while they could amortize the NRE costs over zillions of chips sold, eating the market from below. And other RISC competitors (and IA-64) were attacking from the sides. DEC just didn't have the customer base or depth of…

In my limited understanding two factors contributed significantly to Alpha failing. Business-wise, DEC and Ken Olesen were stuck in an old minicomputer mentality and wasn't sufficiently able or willing to "let it loose" and let it take over the market with DEC as the CPU supplier. Technically, Alpha development was taking longer and longer and the schedule slips got worse and worse.

It wasn't the technical side that caused the schedule slips. It was constant competition with other aspects of the business, especially the VAX lineup. The VAX 9000 in particular was a $3 billion money pit that didn't make back even 25% of it's development costs and was repeatedly chosen over development of prism and later alpha. Even when it came down to the embarrassingly fast NVAX chip vs the even faster Alhpa, DEC still couldn't get the story straight and lost valuable VAX customers when they could have offered a faster VAX and an upgrade path to Alpha.

Re: Intel Itanium IA-64 Support Removed with the Linux 6.7 Kernel

#43

Post by mahkeiro »

tux3 wrote: post #16
pram wrote: post #11

The Itanium sales forecasts never fail to make me laugh. Aged like the finest wine: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Itanium_...

Contrast with the notorious IAE solar forecast: https://zenmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/iea-vs-reality-... Statistics and modeling are complicated, granted. But when your model diverges from reality 5 years in a row, perhaps you should just extrapolate the current line next time around. (In the case of the Itanic, that would have been the line at 0. Still a better forecast than what they did!)

Especially funny when you know that the figure for 2022 is 320GW which is completely off this chart!

Re: Intel Itanium IA-64 Support Removed with the Linux 6.7 Kernel

#44

Post by MBCook »

duskwuff wrote: post #22
tux3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrast with the notorious IAE solar forecast: https://zenmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/iea-vs-reality-... Statistics and modeling are complicated, granted. But when your model diverges from reality 5 years in a row, perhaps you should just extrapolate the current line next time around. (In the case of the Itanic, that would have been the line at 0. Still a better forecast than what they did!)

> Contrast with the notorious IAE solar forecast "There's no way this level of growth can be sustainable." "Surely we've hit a stable level by now." "Maybe that last year was a fluke." Love to see it. :)

The motorcar is a fad! Surely after 115 years it will be over!

Re: Intel Itanium IA-64 Support Removed with the Linux 6.7 Kernel

#46

Post by twoodfin »

bombcar wrote: post #37
twoodfin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compatibility and ubiquity wins. As nearly always. I’m not particularly confused about Intel’s perspective on compatibility: Even at the time, there were several examples of successful platform CPU transitions across architectural “full breaks”. Apple going from 68k to PowerPC is the closest analogy for Intel, and if the Itanium performance and software (compiler) story had played out as Intel envisioned they likely…

I think it's the case that they wanted to believe that, because the other story, that all the major "big iron" companies would be absolutely and totally forever wrecked by stupid free Linux running on stupid cheap whiteboxes was simply too horrible to envision.

Data center computing being dominated by commodity Linux running on commodity x86 PC architecture—for which the best CPUs were not commodities, but rather made exclusively by Intel—was likely the best of all possible worlds for them!

Going back to at least the i432, Intel seems to have had a deep vein of “mainframe envy” in their culture and strategic thinking. It seems that somehow the market (and a bit of trailblazing into x86-64 by AMD) saved them from themselves.

Re: Intel Itanium IA-64 Support Removed with the Linux 6.7 Kernel

#47

Post by initplus »

twoodfin wrote: post #21
jamiek88 wrote: post #2

It's funny thinking back to the hype cycle of Itanium back in the heady days where performance was doubling every year, desktop was king and this was the future . Turns out it was more like IBM's MCA / PS2 rather than the future. Compatibility and ubiquity wins. As nearly always.

Compatibility and ubiquity wins. As nearly always. I’m not particularly confused about Intel’s perspective on compatibility: Even at the time, there were several examples of successful platform CPU transitions across architectural “full breaks”. Apple going from 68k to PowerPC is the closest analogy for Intel, and if the Itanium performance and software (compiler) story had played out as Intel envisioned they likely…

Same company that completely missed the boat on mobile not that many years later. Intel have consistently made serious mistakes in their strategic direction. Fumbling 64bit, turning Apple down on mobile, missing GPU/AI.

They are basically just building a better version of the same product they were selling 20 years ago… so much opportunity missed here.

Re: Intel Itanium IA-64 Support Removed with the Linux 6.7 Kernel

#48

Post by cbmuser »

tux3 wrote: post #16
pram wrote: post #11

The Itanium sales forecasts never fail to make me laugh. Aged like the finest wine: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Itanium_...

Contrast with the notorious IAE solar forecast: https://zenmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/iea-vs-reality-... Statistics and modeling are complicated, granted. But when your model diverges from reality 5 years in a row, perhaps you should just extrapolate the current line next time around. (In the case of the Itanic, that would have been the line at 0. Still a better forecast than what they did!)

[flagged]

Re: Intel Itanium IA-64 Support Removed with the Linux 6.7 Kernel

#49

Post by jodrellblank »

duskwuff wrote: post #22
tux3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrast with the notorious IAE solar forecast: https://zenmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/iea-vs-reality-... Statistics and modeling are complicated, granted. But when your model diverges from reality 5 years in a row, perhaps you should just extrapolate the current line next time around. (In the case of the Itanic, that would have been the line at 0. Still a better forecast than what they did!)

> Contrast with the notorious IAE solar forecast "There's no way this level of growth can be sustainable." "Surely we've hit a stable level by now." "Maybe that last year was a fluke." Love to see it. :)

> ""There's no way this level of growth can be sustainable.""

Those are GW of added capacity per year, their prediction flatlining is predicting sustaining the same level of growth.

Re: Intel Itanium IA-64 Support Removed with the Linux 6.7 Kernel

#50

Post by cbmuser »

GrilledChips wrote: post #34
failuser wrote: post #32

The worst thing about Itanium is that it killed DEC Alpha, high-performance MIPS and some other arches I keep forgetting about.

It's kind of funny. There are lots of architectures it killed (Alpha, PA-RISC, basically everything except SPARC because Sun was sceptical) but basically all of them have outlived it in the linux kernel. It killed their manufacturing based on hype, where as they all established a firm install base before itanium ever got rolling, which has ensured they continue to be (halfheartedly) maintained.

Itanium was killed because unlike all the other architectures it puts a rather big burden on upstream developers due its complicated design (dual stack with growth into two directions, complicated compiler optimizations etc).
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