Re: Question to Kerry Main

IanMiller wrote:
On Jul 1, 9:54 pm, "Paul Raulerson" <p...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<SNIP>
I'm not sure in my mind about Itanium yet; I am thinking that porting VMS to
x86 may well be the way of the future, but HP has chosen Itanium for
(presumably) very good reasons. What do you think about the platform choice?

-Paul

I notice that some in the trade press are starting to think Itanium
has a future.

http://www.techworld.com/opsys/features/index.cfm?featureID=3503
"The Itanium is great, it's got a future, and it's selling pretty well
-- considering. This is Intel's latest war-cry, as it bids to
resurrect the fortunes of a chip that many IT industry observers have
all but written off."
...
"So Itanium is gaining share in a slow-growing market, and the roadmap
is back on track, re the key messages that Intel was keen to put over.
The sub-text, not so hidden beneath the surface, was that the chip
vendor won't be putting the Itanium out to grass anytime soon, and
that software vendors, hardware OEMs and -- most importantly -- end
users needn't fear for the future of Itanium-based systems."

Well, to be more accurate some in the trade press are reporting that Intel certainly *wants* people to think that Itanic has a future: if you read the above carefully all of it refers to Intel's message rather than expressing the opinion of the author.

So Itanic has finally managed to acquire a sufficient percentage of the former PA-RISC market (that was presented to it as a gift), the remnants of the Alpha market (the VMS portion of which cHumPaq likewise attempted to donate, though much of the customer base seems to have had other ideas), and peripheral contributions from Windows, Linux, and the seven (or however many it is) dwarfs who adopted Itanic along with HP to match the nearly 1/3 share of the market that PA-RISC used to enjoy all by itself. Somehow I don't think that a mere PA-RISC replacement was quite what Intel had in mind, nor HP, for that matter (though that was at least part of what they needed from the product) - but they seem determined to put the best face possible on the situation, at least as long as they care how Itanic is perceived externally.

Since neither POWER nor SPARC is benefiting from a similar forced migration, Itanic will likely continue to 'gain market share' modestly against them in this increasingly niche and likely shrinking (but still important) market as long as portions of the PA-RISC base continue to find it necessary to seek a new vessel as their existing systems become obsolete. There's no hope that Itanic will even begin reducing the devastating performance lead that POWER currently enjoys for about the next two years until Tukwila arrives with CSI - and the tepid projection that Tukwila (having twice the core count) will only double Montecito's performance suggests that on a per-core basis POWER's lead on a per-core basis may instead continue to grow - so, just as has been the case since its ill-fated debut, Itanic seems destined to continue to be sandwiched between ever-increasing x86 capabilities on the low end and unassailable competition on the high end: exactly the opposite of the situation that Intel and HP originally envisioned for it, and hardly a recipe for the kind of overall market domination they invested their $billions to achieve.

The good news is that Intel has already pared back Itanic development enough (and leveraged CSI infrastructure sharing with x86) that continuing it at its currently leisurely pace seems eminently affordable to them: as long as they don't need the remaining Itanic resources elsewhere (as they've apparently finally admitted was the case in their frantic quest to counter the AMD64 threat), there's no obvious reason to think they'll dump Itanic without waiting to see how Tukwila fares (unless, of course, they falter seriously elsewhere and decide to make ostentatious cuts to mollify Wall Street).

I'd be a lot more worried (at least over the short term) that HP will dump VMS than that Itanic will suddenly sink out from underneath it.

- bill
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Why is SUN falling so far behind IBM?
    ... >> the mass market and as a replacement for x86. ... However, intel and HP ... You clearly forget that Itanium is not only intel's baby. ... For HP (which had to carry a big bunch of the development costs) the ...
    (comp.unix.solaris)
  • Re: Why is SUN falling so far behind IBM?
    ... >> the mass market and as a replacement for x86. ... However, intel and HP ... You clearly forget that Itanium is not only intel's baby. ... For HP (which had to carry a big bunch of the development costs) the ...
    (comp.unix.aix)
  • Re: new Itanium after Tukwila: Poulson
    ... > Intel has put in tons of money and raw force to get IA64 to where it ... I would say correct for all ISAs except x86. ... The amount of cache in Itanium has a lot more to do with data than ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • RE: Why did VMS users go along with the itanium farce?
    ... do you at least acknowledge that Intel and HP have over the ... And I have repeatedly said that both Intel and HP have stated Itanium is ... > gets targetted only at a small volume niche market. ... platform is the small part of any major transition - then there is the ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: Intel neuters Montvale, Itanic screams in alarm
    ... > So you see Fujitsu expects to sell a mainframe based Itanium ... > Think of the repercussions of Intel suddenly souring on Itanium. ... existing x86 software that won't run on Itanium. ...
    (comp.os.vms)