The future of the Itanic

[Leo V]

I'm anything but thrilled with Intel's concoctions like RDRAM, MTH, and the P4/Willamette. However, their Itanium draws a lot of my sympathy. Why? Because it's the first serious attempt to leave the obsolete, doomed, sinking x86 architecture (at least for common PC's).

The irony, of course, is that this chip was originally intended to debut in 1997 according to this recent sneak preview. As a result, its working samples are themselves severely outdated by newer x86 chips. Which is obsolete and sinking now? Enter the term "Itanic."

But I'd much rather see Itanic being redesigned to succeed. Does anyone know if Intel is still trying to make its "next gen" IA-64 a viable future platform? Just think of what you can do with a 64-bit CPU that has 128 general-purpose registers (x86 CPU's sport 4 32-bit ones! ). Theoretically such a CPU should be miles ahead of x86 by design alone (even with a similar fab process). Obviously apps need to be designed/compiled in radically different ways to use the parallel architecture. The speed would also allow software emulation of x86 programs. This means you'd be able to run Glide and Windoze games in emulation under Linux. The architecture could also be streamlined without the legacy crap that makes PC's so painful to configure (and slows them down). No more IRQ and instability nightmares. Hey, it's OK to dream sometimes.

Can anyone supply a reality check? What's really happening in the foreseeble future?

 

[pm]

I can assure you that Intel is still working on and commited to the Itanium Processor family. I spend my days (and some nights) working on one piece of it.

There's truly one thing that I hate about working in high-tech and that when you are working on something cool and can't talk about it. I have a lot of comments that I could make in a thread like this, and quite simply can't. Definitely not a fun thing.

 

[Leo V]

pm, your reassurance in itself is very helpful. It's great to know that Intel hasn't given up so easily, and I wish you guys luck with this.

 

[pm]

Thanks, Leo. I have a feeling we won't let you down.

 

[Noriaki]

Don't worry Leo...

Remember when the Pentium first came out?

The P60 and P66 were a joke compared to the fastest 486s...but as time went on the Pentium went onto slaughter it this is the same thing, just on a bigger scale because it's a whole new architecture.

I am fully convinced that the IA-64 will kick some ass when it's ready.

Arg: a little slow, that's what I get for hitting reply then leaving my comp for 15 minutes

 

[Sohcan]

I'm pretty sure even Intel has long stated that Merced/Itanium will just be the IA-64 test-bed, and will not see a wide-scale release. Besides, McKinley, the HP/Intel IA-64 venture, is due out late 2001/early 2002, and will undoubtedly feature architecture improvements.

 

[rahvin]

<<I'm pretty sure even Intel has long stated that Merced/Itanium will just be the IA-64 test-bed, and will not see a wide-scale release. Besides, McKinley, the HP/Intel IA-64 venture, is due out late 2001/early 2002, and will undoubtedly feature architecture improvements.>>

HP has participated from day one.

IA-64 will kick major ass if they can ever get it off the ground. I think the complier work has taken them a lot longer than expected. The compilers with this architecture have to be spotless or the architecture will look like crap. (because IA-64 is so dependent on good code coming into the processor)

 

[PowerJoe]

And in case you're wondering, Microsoft compiles every Whistler build for IA-64 too

-PJ