Itanium: A cautionary tale

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But the problems went beyond hardware. The initial promise that x86 and PA-RISC software would run unchanged on the chip only came true for a tiny fraction of applications, and Intel and HP began working hard to lure software companies, whose revenues are tied strongly to how widely a server family is used.

HP and Intel have made progress on the software front. They now have a list of 5,000 applications that run on Itanium, about half of them for HP-UX. In addition, they launched the Itanium Solutions Alliance this year to help lure more.

"We've had some Itanium prospects who had to go back to PA-RISC because their (software) tools weren't available on Itanium."

--Chris Koppe, CEO, Speedware

Unfortunately, 5,000 applications still isn't enough.

Chris Koppe, CEO of Quebec-based Speedware and a board member of the Encompass HP user group, has seen firsthand the importance of the missing Itanium software as his company helps customers migrate off the HP 3000, an earlier server line that's being phased out. About 70 percent of those customers are moving to HP-UX, and of those about half are still buying PA-RISC servers and half Itanium, Koppe said.

"We've had some Itanium prospects who had to go back to PA-RISC because their (software) tools weren't available on Itanium," Koppe said, adding that the tide is slowly turning.

Newer troubles
The October news of Montecito's delay isn't the Itanium's only recent trouble. Intel has also lowered the chip's planned top speed and disabled a 200MHz performance-boosting feature called Foxton. Release dates for future sequels also slipped a year--a Montecito revamp code-named Montvale into 2007, and Tukwila into 2008.

On top of that, some Itanium allies have departed or backed away.

IBM and Dell dropped Itanium servers this year, leaving HP the only one of the top server makers to sell them.

Among the smaller remaining companies that sell Itanium systems--NEC, Unisys, Fujitsu, Silicon Graphics Inc., Groupe Bull and Hitachi--there has been consolidation, as NEC and Unisys announced an October partnership to jointly design Itanium systems.

In January, Microsoft canceled Windows for Itanium workstations and in September said the next Itanium version of Windows for servers would be limited to use with high-end software such as the SQL Server database.

SGI, already struggling financially, has been hit again. "We were aligning our road map and product delivery to have a time-to-market release with the Montecito processor," Parry said. "Fortunately, we got enough advance insight into where things were that we've been able to react and build a product line based on Madison 9M as an interim solution."

SGI still believes it made the right decision, though. "Intel is going onward and upward with additional dual-core and multicore designs. We see them as great engines to our systems," Parry said.

The Montecito delay in October also affected HP, which had planned to release a new high-end Itanium server that uses Montecito and a chipset code-named Arches.

The October change particularly affected Unisys, whose ES7000 line can accommodate both Xeon and Itanium chips. The company now is delaying a feature that Intel had planned to launch in 2007, a "common platform architecture" that would allow Xeon and Itanium chips to plug into the same sockets. That would have simplified Unisys server designs.

Competitors have become increasingly eager to pounce on Itanium.

Software companies "make their money on licensee counts, so for them it's very important for them to achieve volume," said Karl Freund, vice president of marketing for IBM's rival Power-based Unix servers. "It doesn't have that critical mass."

And Sun President Jonathan Schwartz said on his blog in November that Itanium is headed for "a lingering death."

But through it all, Itanium allies maintain their optimism.

"We certainly had our challenges," HP's Huck said. "All in all, we're coming out ahead."

[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!