IA64 and emulator performance
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From: Nick Maclaren on 21 Oct 2006 11:17 In article <memo.20061021155512.2712B(a)jgd.compulink.co.uk>, jgd(a)cix.co.uk (John Dallman) writes: |> |> > Which may not be saying much, of course... but it definitely has |> > at least a few features the Pentium lacks, and it must be justifying |> > its price with some degree of increased performance over common |> > garden Pentium IV chips? |> |> Oh, yes. But the justifications are mainly psychological, not technical. Not entirely. Intel held back most "large server" features of its x86 line to avoid destroying the IA64 market, but there are very strong indications that that policy has now ceased. |> The people who are buying Itanium systems fall into several distinct |> groups: |> |> * People who simply need, for political or psychological reasons, to |> be using the large, expensive, and very "corporate" computer. They |> would have bought System/Z in the nineties, rather than large Suns. With damn good reason! The large Suns of the 1990s were jumped-up workstations, and made ghastly large servers. The E10K started to catch up and the F15K was a very serious beast. zArch has always been a very serious (indeed, saturnine) server solution. But you are missing the fact that there ARE good reasons to favour large SMP servers over clusters of server/workstations and, for the reason I started with, the IA64 was the only Intel chip appropriate for such systems. Well, insofar as it is appropriate even for that :-) Regards, Nick Maclaren.
From: Graeme Gill on 21 Oct 2006 12:36 jsavard(a)ecn.ab.ca wrote: > lack thereof) it seems to me that the Itanium is the closest thing to a > mass-market supercomputer chip there is. Which may not be saying much, I thought all the NVidia and ATI GPU cards out there were the closest thing to a mass-market supercomputer chip actually :-) Graeme Gill.
From: Bengt Larsson on 21 Oct 2006 15:30 jgd(a)cix.co.uk (John Dallman) wrote: >The last two groups don't tend to believe that there is a real risk of >Itanium disappearing, largely because they believe the statements to >that effect from HP and Intel executives. The problem is that (a) Intel >is now in complete control, because HP sold their IA-64 design teams and >intellectual property to Intel, so HP's controls are purely contractual >(b) Intel will, in the end, do whatever it takes to survive, and some >point, they'll get fed up of loosing money on Itanium. Are you sure they do lose money on Itanium? Nobody knows how much HP pays Intel to do Itanium. If HP doesn't want to use x86 in their big servers, what can they do? Use PowerPC or SPARC :-)
From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Niels_J=F8rgen_Kruse?= on 21 Oct 2006 15:47 Bengt Larsson <bengtl7.net(a)telia.NOSPAMcom> wrote: > jgd(a)cix.co.uk (John Dallman) wrote: > > >The last two groups don't tend to believe that there is a real risk of > >Itanium disappearing, largely because they believe the statements to > >that effect from HP and Intel executives. The problem is that (a) Intel > >is now in complete control, because HP sold their IA-64 design teams and > >intellectual property to Intel, so HP's controls are purely contractual > >(b) Intel will, in the end, do whatever it takes to survive, and some > >point, they'll get fed up of loosing money on Itanium. > > Are you sure they do lose money on Itanium? Nobody knows how much HP > pays Intel to do Itanium. If HP doesn't want to use x86 in their big > servers, what can they do? Use PowerPC or SPARC :-) Nothing stops Intel from selling Itanium back to HP if they tire of it. Killing it from under HP would be stupid. -- Mvh./Regards, Niels J?rgen Kruse, Vanl?se, Denmark
From: Bengt Larsson on 22 Oct 2006 04:57
nospam(a)ab-katrinedal.dk (Niels J?rgen Kruse) wrote: >Bengt Larsson <bengtl7.net(a)telia.NOSPAMcom> wrote: > >> >(b) Intel will, in the end, do whatever it takes to survive, and some >> >point, they'll get fed up of loosing money on Itanium. >> >> Are you sure they do lose money on Itanium? Nobody knows how much HP >> pays Intel to do Itanium. If HP doesn't want to use x86 in their big >> servers, what can they do? Use PowerPC or SPARC :-) > >Nothing stops Intel from selling Itanium back to HP if they tire of it. >Killing it from under HP would be stupid. To clarify: Sorry for not being clear. Are you sure they do lose money on Itanium? Nobody knows how much HP pays Intel to do Itanium. If HP doesn't want to use x86 in their big servers, what can HP do? They (HP) could use PowerPC or SPARC :-) |