Intel Itanium

[William Muriithi]

On 24 March 2011 10:54, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 05:08:36AM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
>>   Here's an anonymous post from approximately 5 years ago with a cynical
>> take on Itanium...
>>
>>
>> Is Microsoft responsible for Intel's Itanic disaster?
>> Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 21 2006 @ 04:12 PM EST
>> There was no Itanic disaster.
>>
>> Remember, when Intel started the Itanium bluff, they hand zero presence
>> in 64-bit computing and very limited presence in high-end computing.
>> Leading 64-bit players were MIPS/SGI, Alpha/Dec, PA-RISC/HP, and yes,
>> IBM and Sparc.
>>
>> In fear of Itanium, SGI spun-off MIPS and became a Wintel reseller.
>> Compaq feared Itanium would quickly kill DEC's Alpha and gave it to
>> Intel when they bought DEC. HP redirected their hardware resources away
>> from PA-RISC to their intel/itanium partnership.
>>
>> Without laying out a single transistor, Itanium completely destroyed 3
>> of the 5 64-bit competitors; and Intel went from being a PC desktop
>> brand to a wall-street-recognised leader in high-end computing.
>>
>> Never was there a more successful bluff in business. I don't see how
>> people can consider that a failure.
>
> If it wasn't for AMD making x86_64, intel would have been in a lot of
> trouble now.  intel really did think the itanium would work and that
> they could get rid of x86 (and hence amd and via and such) in the high
> end server market where the nice profits are to be found.
>
> So yes they destroyed 3 of the 5 64bit platforms, but intel didn't
> have one themselves, so what good was it for them if the itanium didn't
> work out?

Very well said.  I was about to mention the same thing. Itanium was
not a bluff at all. They almost got left behind by AMD as they
desperately tried to push Itanium.  Heck, they even ended up licensing
AMD technology when Microsoft refused to support their own version of
x86_64.  Plus, they burnt  through $ 5 billion if I recall correctly.

I felt like if it was not for Linux, there would be no x86_64.
Microsoft only supported x86_64  after AMD had a decent sales.  If it
was not for Linux support, I am not sure AMD would have been able to
push that project successfully.

William
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