Interesting read about upcoming K9 processors

In article ,
Tony Hill writes:
| On 3 Aug 2004 13:37:34 GMT, (Nick Maclaren) wrote:
| In article ,
| Tony Hill writes:
| |
| | Definitely! At least publicly Intel is STRONGLY saying that IA64 is
| | the one true path for the future, customers be damned!
|
| If Intel even let hint that they were having second thoughts, IA64
| would be dead overnight except in HP and SGI "big iron".
|
| I'm not sure that would be very different from where they stand now.
| From what I understand HP and SGI make up well over 90% of all Itanium
| server revenues. Everyone else (IBM, Dell, Unisys, Bull and whoever
| else) are mostly fighting for a few scraps.

No. "Dead" as in Norwegian Blue parrots, not merely half-dead as
at present.

| Somewhat
| surprisingly, I think that SGI would weather that pretty well, but
| HP would be in dead trouble.
|
| I'd say that it's completely the opposite. SGI has absolutely nothing
| else but Itanium going for it. Their old MIPS sales are all but dried
| up and the revenue their getting from service contracts is *rapidly*
| vanishing.

Er, no. Look at their financials and customers. The former are
now balanced, and the latter have retrenched to the 'technical'
marketplace. And we are a damn sight less worried about which
CPUs we use than the 'commercial' market, as we are accustomed to
rebuilding codes on a few year timescale. Provided that Intel
still produces IA64 systems and delivers boring enhancements
(shrinks, clock rate, caches etc.), SGI is OK for now.

| HP, on the other hand, could easily afford to just ditch their
| Integrity group altogether and keep going with the rest of their
| businesses. It might hurt a bit, but all their Itanium servers
| combined only make up a relatively small portion of the companies
| total market. Their Xeon-based Proliant servers still bring in a LOT
| more revenue.

Look at their margins. They are zilch in that division, and there
is little chance of a change. They are in printing and services,
and the latter will disappear if all of the SuperDome, VMS and
Integrity products do so. And all of those are currently dependent
on IA64.

| My belief is that Intel are trying to deny the failure of IA64 until
| they get their new range of designs onstream (planned for 2007).
|
| I doubt that they'll ever admit failure... did they ever admit that
| the i860 never came remotely close to the lofty expectations for it?
| What was supposed to revolutionize the entire processor industry ended
| up as little more than a co-processor for storage and networking
| devices?

Internally. I agree that they will never admit failure in public.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

(Nick Maclaren) writes:

In article ,
Tony Hill writes:
On 3 Aug 2004 13:37:34 GMT, (Nick Maclaren) wrote:

If Intel even let hint that they were having second thoughts, IA64
would be dead overnight except in HP and SGI "big iron".

I'm not sure that would be very different from where they stand now.
From what I understand HP and SGI make up well over 90% of all Itanium
server revenues. Everyone else (IBM, Dell, Unisys, Bull and whoever
else) are mostly fighting for a few scraps.

I wouldn't really call it fighting; more like having something
available, just in case anybody would want it. The numbers seem to
indicate few people do. If you want to compare market share, you
should compare HP IA64s to IBM Powers and Sun Sparcs.

I'd say that it's completely the opposite. SGI has absolutely nothing
else but Itanium going for it.

Er, no. Look at their financials and customers. The former are
now balanced, and the latter have retrenched to the 'technical'
marketplace. And we are a damn sight less worried about which
CPUs

I think most of HP's IA64 sales also are going to the scientific
computing segment. And while the commercial customers may be more
worried, it depends on what HP replaces IA64 with; I'm not sure people
would object strongly to Superdomes with Opterons or 64-bit Xeons, for
instance.

-k
--
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants

In article ,
Ketil Malde writes:
|
| I think most of HP's IA64 sales also are going to the scientific
| computing segment. And while the commercial customers may be more
| worried, it depends on what HP replaces IA64 with; I'm not sure people
| would object strongly to Superdomes with Opterons or 64-bit Xeons, for
| instance.

If your first sentence is true, HP's IA64 lines are in worse trouble
than even I thought they were.

No, I don't think people would object, but that's not my point.
It is the time to revalidate and the loss of confidence - both are
more of an issue in the commercial arena.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

(Nick Maclaren) writes:

Ketil Malde writes:

I think most of HP's IA64 sales also are going to the scientific
computing segment.

If your first sentence is true, HP's IA64 lines are in worse trouble
than even I thought they were.

I guess I should emphasize that I'm just guessing - I know about a few
Superdomes that do number crunching (which anyway is what IA64 is good
at). Are there any numbers; anywhere?

OTOH, I think the commercial segment generally chooses vendor first,
and architecture later. So the customers who used to buy HPPA boxes
now buy HP IA64 boxes, and will (happily?) buy HP x86_64 boxes, if
that's what it takes. They'll need some reassurance that the new
stuff is in some way better, but will tend to stick with the vendor as
long as they get the service they want. IMHO.

-kzm
--
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants

In article ,
Ketil Malde writes:
|
| I think most of HP's IA64 sales also are going to the scientific
| computing segment.
|
| If your first sentence is true, HP's IA64 lines are in worse trouble
| than even I thought they were.
|
| I guess I should emphasize that I'm just guessing - I know about a few
| Superdomes that do number crunching (which anyway is what IA64 is good
| at). Are there any numbers; anywhere?

Almost certainly, but HP are unlikely to disclose them :-)

HP effectively consigned the academic and technical marketplaces
to limbo over a decade ago, and are a bit player in HPC. The
number crunching SuperDomes I know of were special deals to try to
promote them in those areas. I have not heard of many 'normal'
sales.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

(Nick Maclaren) wrote in news:ceq7fc$hq$1
@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk:

Er, no. Look at [SGI's] financials and customers. The former are
now balanced, and the latter have retrenched to the 'technical'
marketplace. And we are a damn sight less worried about which
CPUs we use than the 'commercial' market, as we are accustomed to
rebuilding codes on a few year timescale. Provided that Intel
still produces IA64 systems and delivers boring enhancements
(shrinks, clock rate, caches etc.)

Interestingly, in the commercial arena there is a move to
commoditise the CPU as well. The core point is that much
*new* commercial development is being done in Java or .NET,
both of which have machine-independent "bytecode" plus
interpreters at their core. The choice is thus becoming
between Java or .NET, with the added twist of a choice
of application server.

It will, of course, be a long time before the *old* codes
can be consigned to the dustbin


--
Tom Gardner
Mobile Payments,
LogicaCMG Wireless Networks
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Tony Hill wrote:

It's not really their problem and they don't really have a solution.
There are lots of old, badly written applications that just won't run
at all in WinXP... and MS doesn't really care.

Can't say I blame them for that. Sometimes it's just time to move on.
They seem to have made a very reasonable attempt at retaining
backwards compatibility (not that they had much choice)...

On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 07:23:40 GMT, "Dean Kent"
wrote:

So, it would appear that even in 1996 the concept was not to eliminate x86
entirely, in 1997 it was publicly stated that IA32 would be around for some
time after Y2K, and in 1998 it was publicly stated that IA64 would not be on
the desktop for at least another 3.5 years from *today*. This despite the
recollections of a few who are certain that Intel had more nefarious plans
early on...

Uhh, it's called spin.:-) The fact you or I can't find the docs/pages to
confirm the "recollections" does not mean they did not exist. Nefarious is
your term but I did see a roadmap which showed x86 relegated to mostly STBs
by 2005... after a steady year by year decline in PCs.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 08:55:56 +0200, Jan Vorbrüggen wrote:

Then Intel doesn't truely care about backwards compatability (which was
my point).

Humbug. They don't want to be held back by _accidental_ backward
compatibility, which is a big difference.

Ah so... If an application I bought yesterday doesn't work today, it's
*my* fault? I don't think IBM became a giant with that attitude.

Are you really buying that crap?

MS's marketing? No. But I can read about the effects of their recent
patches, not only to the base operating system.

You really believe they care? Why don't they patch Win2K without having
to sign up for a XPish license agreement? Come on! What's with the XP
license anyway? Yes, and next year you'll rent the OS. ...good plan
this "security" is.

--
Keith

On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 16:33:24 -0400, George Macdonald wrote:

On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 07:23:40 GMT, "Dean Kent"
wrote:

So, it would appear that even in 1996 the concept was not to eliminate x86
entirely, in 1997 it was publicly stated that IA32 would be around for some
time after Y2K, and in 1998 it was publicly stated that IA64 would not be on
the desktop for at least another 3.5 years from *today*. This despite the
recollections of a few who are certain that Intel had more nefarious plans
early on...

Uhh, it's called spin.:-) The fact you or I can't find the docs/pages to
confirm the "recollections" does not mean they did not exist. Nefarious is
your term but I did see a roadmap which showed x86 relegated to mostly STBs
by 2005... after a steady year by year decline in PCs.

The charts I saw were Itanic to exceed x86 sales by 2003 and by '05 x86
was relegated to the dust-bin of embedded losers. ...and that was in
1997ish. There was some discussion about this in AFC a few weeks ago (I'm
not the only one remembering such).

--
Keith