Final Itanium processor released

[SarahKerrigan]

Intel released the Itanium 9700 today - codename "Kittson" (which is actually a codename recycled from a cancelled 22nm Itanium project to make it look less cancelled.) It appears to be a minor clock bump from Poulson (released 2012) with the same die - from 2.53GHz to 2.66GHz. Intel says no more IPF processors will be released. This is it.

I first started working with Itanium systems in 2009. What a long, strange saga this has been.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3196...d-to-replace-x86-in-pcs-hits-end-of-line.html

 

[Carfax83]

Damn, had no idea Itanium was still a thing. I figured it was cancelled long ago, but I confess, I don't really keep up on HPC "big iron" hardware.

I remember reading posts from Paul DeMone, an IA-64 proponent and he always seemed so certain that Itanium was going to take over from x86. I wonder if he's still around somewhere on the net preaching the virtues of EPIC 😀

 

[Yakk]

That was a long drawn out sinking ship. Would be integrating to know how much that saga cost Intel.

 

[NTMBK]

Wow, they announced that thing 4 years ago. Never thought it was going to see the light of day.

 

[SarahKerrigan]

Wow, they announced that thing 4 years ago. Never thought it was going to see the light of day.

The Kittson announced years ago is not the Kittson shipping today. That was supposed to be a 22nm chip, socket-compatible with Xeon-EX, and with significant performance improvements. What shipped was Poulson's Godavari, but under the Kittson codename.

This is not the first time this has happened. See also: Montvale.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So, did Intel ever release both Itanium and x64 CPUs that shared a server socket? I know that they advertised that at one time. Is that the chip that was cancelled?

 

[SarahKerrigan]

So, did Intel ever release both Itanium and x64 CPUs that shared a server socket? I know that they advertised that at one time. Is that the chip that was cancelled?

That was intended for 22nm Kittson, which was canned.

 

[ewite12]

That's a step up from being told Halflife 3 is about to be released!

 

[whm1974]

I'm highly surprised that Itanium lasted this long. Is HPE the only vendor at all that still uses it?

 

[SarahKerrigan]

I'm highly surprised that Itanium lasted this long. Is HPE the only vendor at all that still uses it?

Considering HPE originally designed it, and was always overwhelmingly the largest vendor, is that so surprising?

For what it's worth, the answer is "not quite" - Bull runs GCOS 8 on Itanium (but that's tiny volume) while NEC, Mitsubishi, and Hitachi have continuing Itanium sales in Japan (mostly based on rebadged HPE hardware, although NEC has had some unique or semi-unique models.) Weirdly, IPF has always done rather well there, although Fujitsu SPARC has been gaining ground in the (small) Japanese UNIX market lately.

 

[Space Tyrant]

My old datacenter is in the process of retiring a few (very) old HP Itanium database servers.

I do believe that it's pronounced "Itanic" though... 😛

 

[whm1974]

Is there is still support in Linux and the BSDs for IA-64?

 

[SarahKerrigan]

Is there is still support in Linux and the BSDs for IA-64?

It still exists in the Linux kernel. Distribution support is basically nonexistant past, iirc, SLES 11 and RHEL 5.

 

[whm1974]

It still exists in the Linux kernel. Distribution support is basically nonexistant part, iirc, SLES 11 and RHEL 5.

Well I have heard that Red Hat still supported it, but that was quite a few years ago.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

That was a long drawn out sinking ship. Would be integrating to know how much that saga cost Intel.

Intel made it through RDRAM and Netburst alright enough.