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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

#161

Post by philwelch »

ironhaven wrote: post #71
eigenvalue wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems like the World Energy Outlook report the fossil fuel industry gets a lot of airtime. In the 2018 report[1] most of the sections are dedicated to oil and gas topic and the section on renewables is very skeptical on the viability of renewables. [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2018/

Based on the recent history of the Texas power grid, the skepticism is more than warranted. The cost per megawatt of capacity for renewables is lower than other sources, but the power only gets generated when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, which means more reliable energy sources are priced out of being added to the grid.

Our most recent near-miss at a statewide outage happened because of unexpectedly low wind. It’s happening in Texas first because we have a smaller grid and it’s deregulated to the point where cheap but unreliable renewables can crowd out other sources of generation. The eastern and western grids will face the same problems in the long run the more and more renewables come to replace other sources of power.

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

#162

Post by ethbr1 »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #140
adrianN wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar panels are just doped silicon, some wiring and support frames.

Silicon for solar panels has to be 99.999999 percent pure—six 9s after the decimal. Computer chips are even more demanding. Their silicon needs to be 99.99999999999 percent pure—eleven 9s.

How consumable-intensive is doped silicone production?

Afaik, it's more strict metallurgy (materialurgy?): temperature, time, some physical process.

Point being, I'd be curious on the actual cost of material inputs, if the price of solar panels crashes. How low can they go... and still be worth making?

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

#163

Post by Reason077 »

ironhaven wrote: post #71
eigenvalue wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems like the World Energy Outlook report the fossil fuel industry gets a lot of airtime. In the 2018 report[1] most of the sections are dedicated to oil and gas topic and the section on renewables is very skeptical on the viability of renewables. [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2018/

Seems like recent IEA reports have taken a more upbeat and optimistic view in renewables:

https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-energy-market-update-j...

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

#164

Post by dtech »

vasdae wrote: post #141
the_why_of_y wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The governments have to subsidize solar, so it can compete with government subsidized fossil fuels. You may be surprised to learn that global fossil fuel subsidies rose from $4.5 trillion in 2015 to $7 trillion in 2022. https://www.statista.com/chart/31016/volume-of-global-fossil...

"Indirect subsidies" sounds like a dubious metric.

Why? If you tax A and not B, that is not much different from taxing both but subsidizing B. Most reasonable definitions of subsidies include it.

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

#165

Post by pjc50 »

ethbr1 wrote: post #61
eigenvalue wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The rate limiting is basically factory capacity, yes. Simplified process:

- Czochralski purification of silicon to produce a "boule"

- saw boule into "wafers" (surprisingly important, see "reduced kerf diamond wire saw")

- wafers can be used for microchips, or doped into solar cells

- apply contacts to top face

- package into a panel with glass and aluminium frames

The "wafer" market is somewhat independent. Purification depends on the price of energy (it's very energy intensive). Better sawing reduces waste and increases wafers per boule.

More factories come online all the time. Panels themselves are now extremely cheap, and it's worth looking at "balance of system" (labour, permitting, frames and racks, inverters).

I believe market data firms track all the relevant info, although they don't necessarily give the resulting info away on the internet.

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

#166

Post by ngcc_hk »

jmyeet wrote: post #144
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alpha would have been such a better path to follow, and Intel even ended up with a license for it because of Compaq/HP's incompetence.

Two fun facts about DEC Alpha: 1. Windows NT, which is the ancestor of modern Windows, was originally released on multiple platforms including Alpha and, I believe, MIPS; and 2. DEC, for awhile at least, had one of the most popular Web search engines: AltaVista. It wasn’t a commercial enterprise. It was mostly a technology demonstration for Alpha. For the time it was pretty good. No one at this time (the 1990s) thoug…

When Windows NT and DEC is in the same message, may I suggest to mention that Windows NT is developed essentially by the DEC team.

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

#167

Post by colejohnson66 »

masklinn wrote: post #121
o11c wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alpha was unequivocally terrible though. "Better than Itanium" is really not saying much. * no byte operations * no flags, thus no reasonable way to check for overflow (similar to one of the problems RISC-V is having, though at least they pretend to care).

Also “notoriously weak” memory model even as multithreading was taking off, and > The processor may lose track of your LDx_L if you perform any memory access other than a matching STx_C, or if you perform a branch instruction, or if you trigger a trap (such as executing an emulated instruction), or if you execute more than 20 instructions after the LDx_L. (LDxL and STxC are locked load and conditional store)

What do you mean “lose track of”?

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

#168

Post by spamizbad »

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 sure that was Itanium's only problem. Intel's Itanium launch focused on a market that was not captured by the so-called "Wintel" monopoly: high performance servers. The software support needed in this market was relatively narrow. Nevertheless, it failed there too.

The biggest issue with Itanium is that the juice was never worth the squeeze. It was expensive. The cost to migrate your existing 64bit systems never made sense. So, you might ask, what about 32-bit shops that needed to make the leap to 64 bits? Well, by the time intel and its vendors started getting costs under control, the AMD Opteron hit the scene with commodity 64bit hardware that had the added benefit of full backwards compatibility. And that pretty much killed it.

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

#169

Post by masklinn »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #167
masklinn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also “notoriously weak” memory model even as multithreading was taking off, and > The processor may lose track of your LDx_L if you perform any memory access other than a matching STx_C, or if you perform a branch instruction, or if you trigger a trap (such as executing an emulated instruction), or if you execute more than 20 instructions after the LDx_L. (LDxL and STxC are locked load and conditional store)

What do you mean “lose track of”?

Discard / clear the lock flag, so I assume the store never succeeds (but the behaviour could be less consistent).

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

#170

Post by [deleted] »

p_l wrote: post #153
anarazel wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For GPUs it only really works because the code is translated to the relevant instruction steam close to the time of executing, where you can afford to optimize in a highly uarch specific way. Whereas VLIW at the time of itanium never was in that position... It just doesn't compute for me how Intel thought this was a good plan. It's not like they didn't know that existing compiled binaries are going to continue being…

The critical part was less VLIW, and more EPIC - the Explicit Parallel part. There were previous VLIW arches that didn't have issues with compilers, one of them afaik even formed backbone of many advanced optimizing compilers in 1990s because the vendor licensed the compiler tech to others.

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