I asked the engineering manager about the Itanium and what he remembered was there was a skunkworks project in ZKO that was trying to port Digital Unix to the Itanium, "Mostly because of the IP management constraints/restrictions from Intel." (his words). DEC already had the fastest microcomputer processor in the world (the Alpha), and we were not going to confuse our application base on what they should port to and support. And to show that I was not a RISC bigot (at least not at the time), I just smiled when I saw what AMD did to create their 64-bit instruction set. It was sweet. md

On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 3:30 PM Jon "maddog" Hall <jon.maddog.hall@gmail.com> wrote:
The port of Tru64 to Itanium must have been after I left.   I do not know anyone in the Tru64 product management that would have given any life to that project.  No life.   None.

I can ask one of the engineering managers of that time.

md

On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 2:13 PM Jared Greenwald <greenwaldjared@gmail.com> wrote:
Still boggles my mind the amount of money HP spent on Itanium hardware back after they acquired Compaq/Tru64 only to basically abandon the whole thing and lay off everyone.

On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 11:44 AM Jon "maddog" Hall via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> wrote:
I still vividly remember my boss showing me the plans for support of Intel's Itanium processor.

As someone who taught operating systems and compiler design for a number of years I still remember my shock that THIS was the answer for Intel's 64-bit chip....an Ultra-Wide Instruction set.

I wailed away about how all of this was WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.....mostly because I had spent the past six months proving why even a regular CISC system was the wrong answer, and here Intel was going in the opposite direction.

After twenty minutes of me fuming my boss simply grinned, shrugged his shoulders and left my office.

While I was proud of the fact that the Alpha processor was so prominent in the production of the movie "Titanic"......now I had to deal with a real life "Itanic"....watching it sink.

md

P.S.  It was only a month or so after, I think, that AMD came out with a reasonable extension to the i86 architecture....which (although it was not RISC) I was reasonably happy with.

On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 7:24 AM Tim Keller via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> wrote:
Hey Everybody,

We've got a meeting next week on the 11th at our same time (7pm)

As for a topic, if somebody would like to present something, I'd be up for it.
I figure we'd all toast the depreciation of Itanium in the linux kernel. Good riddance!

We'll definitely be talking about the PI4 Nano!!

As usual, I'm sure other topics will organically surface.

Location: Our usual Jitsu haunt: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA

Later,
Tim.
--
I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".
_______________________________________________
WLUG mailing list -- wlug@lists.wlug.org
To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave@lists.wlug.org
Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/
Change Settings: https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/
Web Forum/Archive: https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/BJNCCXFBJF6XUN6SX6D4WTW4NNCY4JKQ/
_______________________________________________
WLUG mailing list -- wlug@lists.wlug.org
To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave@lists.wlug.org
Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/
Change Settings: https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/
Web Forum/Archive: https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/DM5K6YK2APFGRIOOUNR5ZAQVQ2Z2LF7T/