Dela via

Sinking the ship

  • Artikel

In the past I've already made some comments on this blog about Itanium and quotes magazine articles about the importance of Itanium for Microsoft and Windows (and Intel). Recently we see more and more stuff like this: "Itanium sinks again in supercomputers"

Michael Kanellos writes on news.com: "The Itanium chip family, which Intel has relegated to high-end servers, has rapidly declined on the Top500 Supercomputer list. In November 2004 the list had 84 computers with Itanium 2 processors. In June 2005, the number shrunk to 79. Now only 46 computers contain Itanium 2 chips, according to the latest list, released Monday. Meanwhile, the number of supercomputers using Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron chips has increased. A total of 55 Opteron-based computers made the list, up from 25 in June. (Opterons were found in just 29 computers on the November 2004 list.)"

What's going on with Itanium (r) 2? According to Intel the Intel® Itanium® 2 Processor is "... Intel's highest-performing and most reliable server platform, [that] moves you beyond proprietary RISC platforms to help you meet your business-critical computing needs with proven capability and mainframe-class reliability."

What do you think, do we still need Itanium?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 15, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    November 16, 2005
    Hi Will - thanks for the comment and sharing your view!
    With Visual Studio 2005 Microsoft hid the IPF support a bit. It is available with the Team System edition of Visual Studio. That said, you will not be able to install it on an Itanium based Windows anymore. For IPF cross-platform development only - bummer.
  • Anonymous
    November 24, 2005
    We really don't need the Itanic...It's bus system is very outdated, and nobody really needs floating Point that much. If so, take a Power5 chip...
    Besides, the thing is just too expensive, and slow in integer (compared even to their own Xeon)
    Why does Will think the Itanium scales? Scaling on a bus system? Power5 and Opterons, anything with hypertransport/infiniband/Numa scales, busses don't.