Itanium still Lives!

[Edrick]

http://www.dvhardware.net/article56595.html

At least Intel is making it interesting before it dies.

Intel just delivered the Itanium 9500 "Poulson" processor family. This major update moves the Itanium from 65nm to 32nm and delivers eight cores, twice as many as before. The new chip is available with frequencies of up to 2.53GHz, it promises an up to 8 percent lower TDP and has 80 percent reduced idle power consumption. Other enhancements include 33 percent faster I/O speed, support for Intel Instruction Replay technology, 11 instructions per cycle (five more than 2010's Tukwila), improved multi-threading, unified L3 cache with a bi-directional bus, and many other enhancements.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Thats one epic update. Very nice to see Itanium still kicking. It was wierd to see they jumped over 45nm.

But damn, Poulson basicly moves Itanium up in the top again. And 54MB cache

Soon(tm) you can freely change between Itanium and Xeons on a board. Thats pretty amazing too.

 

[Puppies04]

Thats one epic update.

I agree! Seems like neither a tick or a tock but more like a DONG (completly phallus unrelated)

 

[Idontcare]

I agree! Seems like neither a tick or a tock but more like a DONG (completly phallus unrelated)

Any performance numbers out there yet, synthetics like specfp/int?

 

[Arkaign]

His name .. is Robert Poulson!

 

[Phynaz]

The Intel Itanium processor 9500 series is available now and is priced from $1,350 to $4,650 in quantities of 1,000 units.

I think IDC should buy one an de-lid it ()

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Wow, I never expected this. Is there even demand for this instruction set at this point?

 

[Phynaz]

Why wouldn't there be?

That's like asking if there is demand for IBM Z. It's a multi-billion dollar business, it's just not PC based.

 

[Arachnotronic]

This might be the first Itanium that really does give a compelling reason to buy over a Xeon E7.

 

[CHADBOGA]

I think you guys are getting ahead of yourselves here.

This is a terrible release that puts it beyond doubt that Intel will be winding down Itanium, much like Oracle claimed.

This has twice the cores, radically reworked architecture and increased clockspeed, yet it is barely twice as quick as the previous generation.

With the emergence of ARM, Intel has all the incentive in the world to now concentrate everything it has on spreading x86, and Itanium is a now a diversion it no longer needs.

 

[Yuriman]

I think you guys are getting ahead of yourselves here.

This is a terrible release that puts it beyond doubt that Intel will be winding down Itanium, much like Oracle claimed.

This has twice the cores, radically reworked architecture and increased clockspeed, yet it is barely twice as quick as the previous generation.

With the emergence of ARM, Intel has all the incentive in the world to now concentrate everything it has on spreading x86, and Itanium is a now a diversion it no longer needs.

Ivy Bridge is barely twice as quick as Core2 Quad, depending on the benchmarks you're looking at, yet to me that doesn't imply that Intel is winding down x86. I'm really not sure what to conclude about Itanium.

2010:
February: Intel announces the "Tukwila" Itanium 9300 series.
April: Microsoft announces phase-out of support for Itanium.
October: Intel announces new releases of Intel C++ Compiler and Intel Fortran Compiler for x86/x64, while Itanium support is only available in older versions.
2011:
March: Oracle Corporation announces that it will stop developing application software, middleware, and Oracle Linux for the Itanium.
March: Intel and HP reiterate their support of Itanium.
April: Huawei and Inspur announce that they will develop Itanium servers.
2012:
February: Court papers were released from a case between HP and Oracle Corporation that gave insight to the fact that HP was paying Intel $690 million to keep Itanium on life support.
SAP discontinues support for Business Objects on Itanium. SAPPAM.
September: In response to a court ruling, Oracle reinstitutes support for Oracle Sofware run on Itanium Hardware.

Maybe Intel is keeping it alive as a backup incase they lose rights to use AMD64? :troll:

 

[CHADBOGA]

Ivy Bridge is barely twice as quick as Core2 Quad, depending on the benchmarks you're looking at, yet to me that doesn't imply that Intel is winding down x86. I'm really not sure what to conclude about Itanium.

Ivy Bridge doesn't have twice the cores and the benchmark data that Intel's
own press release is showing are for server benchmarks which love moar cores.

 

[Yuriman]

Doh. Yeah I missed that implication.

 

[Tsavo]

In for a "K" model.

 

[pm]

I worked on Poulson. Powering it up for the first time will stick in my head as one of the coolest things that I have done while working at Intel. There was a point right after it came back from the fab, we had packaged parts and we socketed the first Poulson that went into a system for the first time and then everyone in the control room turned and looked at me and said "ok, Patrick, get it running" and I did. And that, my friends, was truly awesome. I handed off control to another guy less than 5 minutes later, and overall, I played a pretty minor role in things, but I was the very first person to get it to reset on a system and that will stick in my head as pretty cool.

 

[Shephard]

what is the use for a CPU this high priced???

 

[pm]

what is the use for a CPU this high priced???

Servers.
http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/us/en/high-end/integrity-high-end-servers-superdome2.html

 

[lamedude]

So this is what a $690 million CPU looks like.

 

[ShintaiDK]

what is the use for a CPU this high priced???

E7 x86 CPUs cost the same.

 

[Idontcare]

I worked on Poulson. Powering it up for the first time will stick in my head as one of the coolest things that I have done while working at Intel. There was a point right after it came back from the fab, we had packaged parts and we socketed the first Poulson that went into a system for the first time and then everyone in the control room turned and looked at me and said "ok, Patrick, get it running" and I did. And that, my friends, was truly awesome. I handed off control to another guy less than 5 minutes later, and overall, I played a pretty minor role in things, but I was the very first person to get it to reset on a system and that will stick in my head as pretty cool.

That had to have been a rather awesome day at work :thumbsup: One for the memory books to be sure I'm glad you got to experience that, jealous of course, but glad to hear of it!

 

[cytg111]

wtf .. 2x performance increase? And on x86 we're struggeling to get another 10%?
Envy much?
Yes.

 

[Olikan]

wtf .. 2x performance increase? And on x86 we're struggeling to get another 10%?
Envy much?
Yes.

yes, that's competition for you.... and power 7+

 

[ShintaiDK]

wtf .. 2x performance increase? And on x86 we're struggeling to get another 10%?
Envy much?
Yes.

11 issue wide vs 4/5 issue wide. Envy much? Oh yes.

 

[ShintaiDK]

yes, that's competition for you.... and power 7+

No, its a design that can still scale relatively easy.

 

[ViRGE]

Aren't we a week late for zombie stories?

Anyhow, Itanium may be sort of meandering, but it's always interesting to see what Intel is doing with the product lineup. That's definitely one hell of a chip.