"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...