Intel to drop Itanium?

[Chris Nahr]

Yeah, it's from The Register (www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/34555.html), but this time it looks plausible enough.

Allegedly Intel will drop the current Itanium 64-bit design in favour of a 64-bit extension to the current 32-bit line, similar to AMD's x86-64. The reasons are the poor performance of the Itanium, particularly when running 32-bit applications (which require software emulation), and the fact that AMD is already shipping its high-performing AMD-64 line.

Come to think of it, that would be the first time that Intel cloned someone else's processor... and one of its cloners, too!

[zabuni]

I really don't know how well VLIW processors work for general purpose things. You have to have really good software to back them up. Any whose worked with them know how good the compilers and 32 emulators were for it?

[Woolen Horde]

Intel revealed a couple years ago that it once had a team developing a 32/64-bit hybrid like AMD64, but that they had killed the effort because they didn't want it to look like they didn't have faith in Itanium.

Ironically, the team was working on the hybrid as a potential back-up plan in case Itanium failed.

If this is true, then I hope Intel likes crow.

[Jason Becker]

The stuff I've read is if they do this the extensions won't be compatible with the AMD64 line. Guess they wan't to try and mess with the AMD64 line and get devs to make a choice between the two. Wonder if MS would drop the AMD64 version of XP in favor of the Intel one if Intel came out with the new x86-64 hybrid ship. MS has said they don't want to support multiple versions.

[XPav]

Its all about AMD getting their stuff into use as quickly as possible by as many people as possible. If they do that and Microsoft doesn't want to write multiple version, then Intel will have to license the instruction set. (AMD licenses MMX and SSE and various other things, IIRC, so this wouldn't be too out of bounds).

[Brad Grenz]

X86-64 is free for anyone to use. But AMD and Intel already have a blanket cross licensing agreement so they wouldn't have to pay for it anyway.

I also heard Intel was going to go their own way, but I'd heard MS won't support another version of Windows 64 bit. Microsoft has commited to supporting the AMD standard so I tend to believe they told Intel to go x86-64 or go without Windows.

[XPav]

X86-64 is free for anyone to use. But AMD and Intel already have a blanket cross licensing agreement so they wouldn't have to pay for it anyway.

Interesting. I didn't know that. Thanks.

[Erik Andersson]

Allegedly Intel will drop the current Itanium 64-bit design in favour of a 64-bit extension to the current 32-bit line, similar to AMD's x86-64. The reasons are the poor performance of the Itanium, particularly when running 32-bit applications (which require software emulation), and the fact that AMD is already shipping its high-performing AMD-64 line.

I don't think they will drop the IA64-line of processors, but it's hard to know for sure. They were designed for the low-volume, high-end market, so I'm not sure if the Itanium staying there is a failure. When it comes to performance I've seen that the IA64-processors are leading in SpecFP, and that's not what I would call "poor performance". The 32-bit mode is extremely slow however.


Come to think of it, that would be the first time that Intel cloned someone else's processor... and one of its cloners, too!
Well, I guess there is Intel StrongARM also. They didn't develop it but they are (or were) selling it. Of course, being forced to use an AMD extension to their own instruction set would still be a failure of "epic" proportions...

[Chris Nahr]

I don't think they will drop the IA64-line of processors, but it's hard to know for sure. They were designed for the low-volume, high-end market, so I'm not sure if the Itanium staying there is a failure.

As long as they can keep charging the current price they'll probably do fine but they might just get priced out of the market by cheaper 32/64-bit processors -- either AMD's or their own.


When it comes to performance I've seen that the IA64-processors are leading in SpecFP, and that's not what I would call "poor performance".

Compared to which processors? Even the current Itanium 2 only goes up to 1.50 GHz while the P4 has now reached 3.20 GHz. More than twice the clock speed should compensate for the narrow bus, as long as you can make do with 2-3 GB RAM.

[Erik Andersson]

Compared to which processors? Even the current Itanium 2 only goes up to 1.50 GHz while the P4 has now reached 3.20 GHz. More than twice the clock speed should compensate for the narrow bus, as long as you can make do with 2-3 GB RAM.

Compared to all processors. Clock speed isn't everything, P4 and Itanium are very different architectures. A P4 Extreme Edition could get a SpecFP of about 1500, an Itanium 2 1500Mhz is able to get ~2100. They are of course very expensive, but for those who require maximum fp performance (and they are probably the target market), the price of the processor might not be the biggest problem.

[Chris Nahr]

Well, that's pretty fast. In that case they may be able to hold on for a while and recoup their investement on the processor.

By the way, Firing Squad has the first part of an interview with the marketing chief of AMD, Henri Richard: http://www.firingsquad.com/features/amd_henri_richard_interview/

[Chris Nahr]

Here's the second part of the interview with AMD's Henri Richard:
http://www.firingsquad.com/features/amd_henri_richard_interview2/

And here's an amusing reader comment on Richard's non-information:
http://firingsquad.com/news/viewcomment.asp?searchid=5868&filterLevel=1&response_id=205053&page=1&up=&orig_pnum=7