John,
Yes, but I don't properly recall if the Itanium design was started before AMD64 came or as a reaction to the AMD64. Haven't done any research for the real timelines.
Two single-line searches found that the Itanium was launched in 2001 and the AMD x64 was launched in 2003.
It's a shame the Alpha architecture didn't make it, even though it did have some bad design decisions inside it's ISA and internal architecture. It was still a pretty nice and clean 64-bit design. As I recall, it's mostly the memory ordering around byte accesses that are the problem.
This is the first I have heard of these bad decisions. Would you care to elaborate? The memory ordering around byte accesses might have been because the Alpha was designed to be both little endian and big endian. So were the MIPS chips. While many vendors supported only big endian (Motorola, SPARC, etc.) DEC had been supporting little endian in their PDP-11s, VAX, MIPS and Alphas for data compatibility. DEC supported little endian because it was cheaper electronically to have the data held in that fashion. Sun made much fun of DEC for years having Unix systems that were little endian instead of big endian like "real workstations". I kept asking them about these "Intel things" which were little endian too. Sun sneered at me and told me that "Intel chips were not used in real computers".....that is until they ported Solaris to Intel and tried to mix them into their network. Then I took real glee in asking them how they had data compatibility across NFS between SPARC and Intel. As I said, you are the first to mention to me these bad decisions. I am curious to know what they are. md On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 4:56 PM John Stoffel <john@stoffel.org> wrote:
"Jon" == Jon \"maddog\" Hall <jon.maddog.hall@gmail.com> writes:
Yes, but I don't properly recall if the Itanium design was started before AMD64 came or as a reaction to the AMD64. Haven't done any research for the real timelines.
It's a shame the Alpha architecture didn't make it, even though it did have some bad design decisions inside it's ISA and internal architecture. It was still a pretty nice and clean 64-bit design. As I recall, it's mostly the memory ordering around byte accesses that are the problem.
Jon> Allow me translate what you said:
Jon> "As I recall, Itanium was Intel's attempt to bi-furcate the market and Jon> keep 32bit for desktops and such, and to make their 64bit systems for Jon> workstations and such a seperate product so they could take more Jon> control of the motherboard, bios, etc"
Jon> to
Jon> "Itanium was Intel's abortive attempt to block AMD from making a Jon> better, faster, cheaper 64-bit CISC product."
Jon> Shorter, and more to the point.
Jon> On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 4:13 PM John Stoffel <john@stoffel.org> wrote:
Jon> As I recall, Itanium was Intel's attempt to bi-furcate the market and Jon> keep 32bit for desktops and such, and to make their 64bit systems for Jon> workstations and such a seperate product so they could take more Jon> control of the motherboard, bios, etc.
Jon> Then AMD came out with the AMD64 64-bit extenstions to the Intel 386 Jon> (486?) instruction set, since they had an architectural license to the Jon> ISA, so they just extended it and started shipping cheaper CPUs and Jon> chipsets that could easily suport more than 4gb of RAM, without Jon> requiring people to do major re-compiles of their software. Jon> Especially since it would support 32bit applications in a 64bit OS Jon> without *any* recompile needed.
Jon> They ate Intel's lunch. Which is why the Pentium 4 (I think) was such Jon> a monster chip in terms of CPU GHz and heat, because they were trying Jon> to catchup with the Opteron and other AMD chips.
Jon> John
Tim> My perspective was from working at Stratus. Continuum at the time was our flagship line Jon> of servers Tim> that ran on PA-RISC and with Itanium it was clear the end of the line for PA-RISC was Jon> coming.
Tim> Bob Evans and others who were more intimately involved can probably explain it better, Jon> but I Tim> remember Stratus getting a couple Itanium development workstations and my recollection Jon> was that Tim> the engineers weren't impressed. Tim> It wasn't a fundamental improvement on PA-RISC as far as they could tell. Ultimately VOS Jon> was Tim> ported to Xeon and the rest is history. I'm sure someone somewhere is still happily Jon> running Tim> PA-RISC based Stratus servers, but I have to imagine that number dwindles each year.
Tim> Personally I have a hypothesis that Intel had really put it's bets on Xeon and wasn't Jon> really that Tim> invested in Itanium. What it did do was get HP out of the HPC market. It's fair to say Jon> that Xeon Tim> based systems running Linux pretty much put the coffin nails in MIPS, PA-RISC and Jon> ultimately Sparc Tim> and likely a few others I don't know about and with it the various operating systems that Jon> didn't Tim> get ported to Xeon.
Tim> On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 11:44 AM Jon "maddog" Hall < jon.maddog.hall@gmail.com> wrote:
Tim> I still vividly remember my boss showing me the plans for support of Intel's Itanium Tim> processor.
Tim> As someone who taught operating systems and compiler design for a number of years I Jon> still Tim> remember my shock that THIS was the answer for Intel's 64-bit chip....an Ultra-Wide Tim> Instruction set.
Tim> I wailed away about how all of this was WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.....mostly because I had Jon> spent the Tim> past six months proving why even a regular CISC system was the wrong answer, and here Jon> Intel Tim> was going in the opposite direction.
Tim> After twenty minutes of me fuming my boss simply grinned, shrugged his shoulders and Jon> left my Tim> office.
Tim> While I was proud of the fact that the Alpha processor was so prominent in the Jon> production of Tim> the movie "Titanic"......now I had to deal with a real life "Itanic"....watching it Jon> sink.
Tim> md
Tim> P.S. It was only a month or so after, I think, that AMD came out with a reasonable Jon> extension Tim> to the i86 architecture....which (although it was not RISC) I was reasonably happy Jon> with.
Tim> On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 7:24 AM Tim Keller via WLUG < wlug@lists.wlug.org> wrote:
Tim> Hey Everybody,
Tim> We've got a meeting next week on the 11th at our same time (7pm)
Tim> As for a topic, if somebody would like to present something, I'd be up for it. Tim> I figure we'd all toast the depreciation of Itanium in the linux kernel. Good Jon> riddance!
Tim> We'll definitely be talking about the PI4 Nano!!
Tim> As usual, I'm sure other topics will organically surface.
Tim> Location: Our usual Jitsu haunt: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA
Tim> Later, Tim> Tim. Tim> -- Tim> I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents Jon> as Tim> "consumers". Tim> _______________________________________________ Tim> WLUG mailing list -- wlug@lists.wlug.org Tim> To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave@lists.wlug.org Tim> Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ Tim> Change Settings: https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ Tim> Web Forum/Archive: Tim> Jon> https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/BJNCCX...
Tim> -- Tim> I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as Jon> "consumers".
Tim> _______________________________________________ Tim> WLUG mailing list -- wlug@lists.wlug.org Tim> To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave@lists.wlug.org Tim> Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ Tim> Change Settings: https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ Tim> Web Forum/Archive: Jon> https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/ZDSLSP...