Itanium: A cautionary tale

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Rich Marcello, general manager of HP's Business Critical Server group, adds that more than 90 percent of the company's customers moving off PA-RISC systems are moving to Itanium.

Dividing the market between two chip families is a solid strategy, he added. "The reality is you take $45 billion server market and break it in two," HP's x86-based ProLiant servers for the bottom $22.5 billion and Itanium-based Integrity servers for the other half, he said.

But that divide is somewhat artificial. AMD has made a series of server-oriented improvements to its x86 Opteron chip, making it a better competitor both to Itanium and to Xeon, Intel's x86 server chip. AMD beat Intel to market with useful x86 server features such dual-processing cores, lower power consumption and a 64-bit design--the latter once one of the main advantages Itanium held over 32-bit x86 chips.

In a few short years, AMD's features drew IBM, Sun and even HP to offer Opteron servers, and the chip continues to make strides. In third-quarter shipments of x86 servers, AMD accounted for 5 percent in 2004 but 10 percent in 2005, according to Gartner, while revenue jumped from 4 percent to 8 percent.

In addition, some potential customers are put off by Intel's approach. The reason high-end x86 server start-up Fabric7 chose Opteron is that it easily works in systems with eight processor sockets, CEO Sharad Mehrotra said. "Intel doesn't want you to build greater than four-socket topologies of Xeon," he said.

Intel's moves to keep Xeon competitive hurt Itanium. "Once AMD showed Intel what to do with x86--adding 64-bit support--that was the end of Itanium right there. When Intel announced it was going to do (64-bit x86 chips), it was obvious Itanium was irrelevant for anything but the high end of the market," said Peter Glaskowsky, an Envisioneering analyst and chief architect of start-up MemoryLogix.

Back in the day
The Itanium project began in December 1988 as a secret HP research project to create a successor to the company's own PA-RISC processor family, according to HP Labs' then-chief Dick Lampman.

In 1993, HP approached Intel with the idea of collaborating, said Jerry Huck, HP's technical leader on the project. "Producing our own chips--there was not enough volume, and the economics were not in our favor," he said of the company's decision not to build its own processors. "Intel floated to the top of the list pretty quickly as somebody with the resources that would make this work."

"Once AMD showed Intel what to do with x86--adding 64-bit support--that was the end of Itanium right there."

--Peter Glaskowsky, analyst, Envisioneering

When HP and Intel announced their partnership in 1994, Richard Sevcik, general manager in HP's server group, said in a press release that the companies would create "a unified computing infrastructure that accomplishes three fundamental goals: preserves current customer investments, readies corporate customers for the next century and offers high-volume cost models."

So far, none of those goals has been met.

The chip, initially code-named PA-WideWord, used an architecture called Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing, or EPIC. HP hoped the design would execute more instructions in parallel by lining them up in advance for maximum speed. Those instructions are ordered by an advanced compiler--the software that translates human-written programs into the code consumed by the actual processors. EPIC's compiler-oriented technique contrasts with RISC chips, which are geared to adapt to whatever software instructions are thrown at them.

In 1997, Intel and HP revealed more details, saying the Itanium design "is expected to advance the state of the art in processor technologies, specifically addressing the performance limitations found in today's RISC and CISC (complex instruction set computing) technologies." (x86 chips are CISC designs, though their external interfaces now cloak faster RISC-like cores.) Itanium also would provide "full compatibility for IA-32 (x86) applications and operating systems," Intel said in its press release.

[fred dunn]

The Itanic is dead...Long live Itanic...

Intel needs to face the reality of their situation and stop this fiasco. Buyers of Intel products shoould realize that the premium that they are paying for the Intel brand is caused by run-away dead-end projects such as this. This so much reminds me of the RAMBUS push by Intel as they swore that no Pentium 4 chipset was ever going to be built for anything other than RAMBUS. But after the first chipset fiasco and much market loss to their own Pentium III they finally caved-in but not after losing money in the process.
Intel wants to dictate technology to the public rather than being driven by the publics wishes.

Their marketing and engineering folks need to get out more because they are on a fast track to losing the public's trust.

Fred Dunn

[System Tyrant]

Itanium...

could have been a contender. I think had Intel pushed really hard to make the Itanium platform the new platform they could have done it, but instead they kept the x86 and pushed it over Itanium. Then comes AMD with x86-64 and basically put more nails into the Itanium coffin.

I think Intel was it's own worst enemy when it comes to Itanium. I think we could all be buying Itanium processors now had Intel went for it. Of course we probably would have hated them for the change, but we would have all gotten use to it.

[Lolo Gecko]

... more pixie dust, less unobtainium ...

the intel/hp dog and pony show is over; it was good while it lasted; but, a (1) trick x86 act none the less. these guys should hang-up their slide rules and call it quits, while they can still exist with a modicum of dignity. clearly, they can still talk the talk; unfortunately, they can't walk the walk. hang it up guys, you're turning our profession into a circus, which makes the rest of us real EE's look like a sorry bunch of over the hill clowns.

Itanium was not a failure...

... at least in the technical sense. It's a hot
power-hog maybe, but at the time it was designed
power efficiency wasn't a design priority.

The problem with Itanium is specifically that
the designers were aiming for a processor with a
revolutionary way of managing instructions that
would permit novel algorithms to perform with
brutal efficiency. Of course, what Intel
marketed the thing as a revolutionary step in
the evolution of the x86 microprocessor line.

The problem being, of course, it was the former
and not the latter. Itaniums are excellent
processors for a very specific subset of
algorithms. The CPU itself doesn't do all the
instruction reordering and such of its
predecessors, instead relying on the compiler to
do these things for you -- and the compiler
often requires the developer to code algorithms
a certain way to take advantage of the CPUs
abilities (much more so than is necessary on
other CPUs). If you ran existing software on it,
you got mediocre results, and the cost of the
CPU was (and really still is) just plain silly.

I had taken some training from Intel on Itanium
development for scientists. It was very
elightening, and I can really appreciate what a
beautiful piece of work Itanium (and Intel's
development tools) were. But at the same time, I
had to balk. I was not likely to recode the
applications I use day in and day out for
Itanium, and I would be beholden to others to do
the same for me. Even though I do develop some
software, I just wasn't interested in having to
go into that level of detail to get the
performance boost I expected. If I were, I'd
have been writing assembly code.

Itanium is flagging not because it's a bad CPU,
only because for the majority it's not the best
CPU or best CPU for the money given what people
need to run today, and because the barrier to
making software that could make it the best is
getting higher the more software people use.

The best case scenario for Itanium would be a
move to a JVM or CLR explicitly tuned for
Itanium and a broad shift to running VM-based
software. Intel probably recognized that but
weren't prepared to affect that shift on their
own.

[Lolo Gecko]

gosh, that's really swell ...

:)

[ramsci]

UltraSparc T1 will nail Itanium's coffin

yeah, check it out man, les than 80 watts power consumption, 5 times Xeon performance, less foot print servers..wow..why would anyone consider Itanium ? If floating point ops are what you need, then there is always Opteron.

Man, Intel should scrap Itanium to save money

[felgercarbnaysay]

Nope

Nope, T1 has no impact on Itanic becuase it does not run Windows. Microsoft killed Itanic because they decided to go the way of history and choose the 64-bit instruction set that makes the most sense. There was absolutely no reason for Intel to come up with a new 64-bit instruction set other than to screw AMD. It bit them in the tail.

forgot

Oh,,, got it ,,Is Itanium a medal something like TITANIUM? iF SO THAT STUFF IS HARD, and very durable, allmost none destructible.. Thank you ..Garey

Booooriiinnggggg

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[felgercarbnaysay]

Alll about trying to screw AMD

When I heard that Intel was going to come up with a whole new 64-bit instruction set for Itanium rather than just extend the old 32-bit set, I knew they were in trouble. I lived through the 16 to 32-bit change of the late 1980s and remember how Motorola, Nat Semi and Intel did the logical thing and just extended their instruction sets. Intel's big mistake was getting fixated on screwing AMD and the other Intel cloners. They forgot that changing instruction sets also screwed their sofware partners and, most importantly, their customers.

I disagree with a previous poster's belief that Sun's Niagara is the nail in Itanium's coffin. The nail was Microsoft when they said no to 64-bit windows using Itanium's ill concieved instruction set.

[System Tyrant]

Repeating myself.

I'm only going to disagree with you on the Intel trying to screw AMD thing. Intel has many ways of screwing AMD they didn't need to come up with the Itanium to do it.

[qmuser]

Good chip, but over-priced

I work with both Intel Itanium 2 based machines, and AMD Opteron based machines. The Itaniums are about 10% faster than the Opterons. However, the Itaniums cost about 8 times as much as the Opterons.

If Intel priced their Itanium 2 chips competetively, their sales volume would surge.

[Pieter_Infomet]

Simply not true.
We work with massive Data Warehouses?
The Itanium really shunts data fast!
What applications are you comparing ??

DEC Alpha all over again

I read this story and couldn't help but replace Itanium with Alpha. It read the same way... lack of apps, re-compiles, 64 bit but no 32 bit compatability, etc. Intel/HP could have looked at the Alpha saga and learned a lesson.

DEC, then Compaq, continued the company line of "Alpha forever", just as Intel/HP are continuing the "Itanium forever" company line. But Itanium will suffer the same fate.

And folks like me will buy AMD Opteron and love the performance, ease of use, and happy users.

[madhungarian]

At least Apha wa real...

Wrong...Alpha was a product! Done delivered and a 64bit processor WAY before it's time. The fact that Qmpaq was not able to make it work had to do with it?s own buy out by guess who... HP! Hell, Intel can't even do a 64 bit processor two decades later? Trust me, it has to do with a cultural impotence there more than anything else and unless Otellini has the balls to change that nothing else will change. That culture could not deliver a baby in nine years!

[kakphoto]

Why don't they just give and admit Defeat

While back in the early days it might have been a good thought, today AMD is the only way to go.
I am old VAX/VMS operator and migrated to the Alphas using OPEN VMS and TRU64. Even the older 400 or so MHZ processors can out do even the newer Servers today. They can run forever without rebooting. Most Windows servers need to be rebooted Daily or weekly even Server 2003.
Then the IBM AS/400's need to be Booted (IPL'd) often.
Yes The Alpha's were 64bit, But they were not meant for Workstation use. They were meant to crunch numbers, and the did that very well.
When Compaq bought DEC, Intel got the rights for the ALPHA, but they still couldn't get the ITANIUM to work. AMD actually hired the People who created the ALPHA chip. Its no wonder why they are overtaking INTEL.

[dcs0582]

Author needs dark glasses and a white cane

Considering that Itanium (HP) is now kicking the collective rears of Sun and IBM, I wouldn't put the author in the same class as Nostradamus. The absolute highest Oracle performance known to man can only be had on IA64 servers. Add overall flexibility and management to the mix, and it's easy to understand why Sun and IBM are terrified of HP's current server lineup.

[Pieter_Infomet]

Most of these comments indicate exactly how unscientific most IT people really are.
The comments here reflect opinions, perceptions, markerting hype and blatant dis information.
They represent very little facts. I find it strange that so many offer opinions when in fact they have not even worked with, or properly benchmarked these machines/technologies they are criticizing (more like character assasination).

This is really not useful. I am not reading these articiles because I am interested in personal opinions or infights.

I hope to gain knowledge and insights from other people's experience.

In stead I am appalled by the biased and unscientific non-sensical opinions and stereo-types
of people who call themselves professionals.

This is simply scandalous!