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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

#61

Post by ethbr1 »

eigenvalue wrote: post #55
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!)

In this situation I would assume that the political/internal pressures from the member companies and advisory board were dominating factors as opposed to the forecasters being total dummies. There must have been some reasons why it was not appealing to assume the growth could keep ramping like that. Because it’s an obviously insane forecast after the first few data points are in.

I'd love to hear someone chip in with what it takes to make a solar panel and the rate limiting factors.

E.g. if a solar panel factory (simplifying into a single entity) already exists, is there any reason not to run it at 100% production capacity? What consumables are used?

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

#62

Post by dixie_land »

jmyeet wrote: post #60
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_...

There's a lesson here. Intel basically wanted to get away from x86 because it was licensed to AMD (and Cyrix) due to an earlier (and essentially unlimited) licensing agreement. In the late 90s, the likes of DEC, HP and Sun ruled the server and workstation space. Intel wanted in on this space and didn't want AMD to be able to produce compatible parts so... enter EPIC [1]. The projections (as you point to) were wildly…

You seem very insightful on this topic. May I ask your opinion as to why ARM is taking off on the server market?

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

#63

Post by ethbr1 »

jmyeet wrote: post #60
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_...

There's a lesson here. Intel basically wanted to get away from x86 because it was licensed to AMD (and Cyrix) due to an earlier (and essentially unlimited) licensing agreement. In the late 90s, the likes of DEC, HP and Sun ruled the server and workstation space. Intel wanted in on this space and didn't want AMD to be able to produce compatible parts so... enter EPIC [1]. The projections (as you point to) were wildly…

I've still got a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 Northwood squirreled away somewhere.

The machine it originally ran in is humming away too, albeit with a replacement Pentium M using a socket 478 adapter.

I keep it as a reminder that even billions of dollars can't see around the future corner.

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

#64

Post by akuma73 »

chasil wrote: post #54
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.

While it might sound contrarian, Alpha actually deserved to die. It guzzled power. This was the biggest problem, not solvable in its lifetime with its resources. "According to Allen Baum, the StrongARM traces its history to attempts to make a low-power version of the DEC Alpha, which DEC's engineers quickly concluded was not possible." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM

A lot of ex-Alpha engineers went to PA-Semi which Apple then acquired. Those people are responsible for the epic custom Apple ARM CPUs.

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

#65

Post by chasil »

GrilledChips wrote: post #42
FullyFunctional wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, DE…

I worked on a DECStation 5000/240 running Ultrix, in a student job in 1993.

DEC should have bought MIPS, and ported VMS to it.

Had they made that decision, they might still exist.

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

#66

Post by chasil »

akuma73 wrote: post #64
chasil wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it might sound contrarian, Alpha actually deserved to die. It guzzled power. This was the biggest problem, not solvable in its lifetime with its resources. "According to Allen Baum, the StrongARM traces its history to attempts to make a low-power version of the DEC Alpha, which DEC's engineers quickly concluded was not possible." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM

A lot of ex-Alpha engineers went to PA-Semi which Apple then acquired. Those people are responsible for the epic custom Apple ARM CPUs.

Like I said, DEC also did StrongARM, which probably gave designers in many areas a new perspective.

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

#67

Post by speed_spread »

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.

Yeah, DEC needed to scale the Alpha down, even below PCs. A console deal could have given it a few more years and helped with chip economics.

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

#68

Post by acdha »

raverbashing wrote: post #45

I wonder how good is LLVM optimized code on it, and if SW could have made a difference, or if it was just too hard/too slow to be competitive

It would have helped a lot but they just needed to deliver. Back in the 90s I tried a couple of things using Intel’s compilers, and they helped but not enough to catch up even before you factored pricing in. I still am amazed that they were so set on licensing revenue that they let Itanium really suffer in benchmarks but it was always going to be ugly as long as they couldn’t ship hardware on time or with the promised numbers.

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

#69

Post by usrusr »

cbmuser wrote: post #50
GrilledChips wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I keep wondering if it perhaps simply appeared too early. These days it feels as if almost everything is either open source or runs in some form of JIT compile VM, or both. Back then it was a huge problem to require code to be compiled not just to the general architecture but to the specific model to be fast.

But today? Moving some of the adaptions from the hardware scheduler to process lifetime persistence (as in JIT VM) or even into the software distribution infrastructure could be delightfully transparent.

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

#70

Post by mat_epice »

tedunangst wrote: post #52

This change breaks my IA-64 userland.

I think they way they do this is they post a message to lkml with a “speak now or forever hold your peace” message. I think they won’t remove functionality if anyone has a credible use.

If you’re ever on funky hardware and want to ensure continuing Linux compatibility, I guess it pays to subscribe.

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