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Intel discontinues IA-64 Itanium processors
Intel is pulling the plug on the 9700 Itanium processors, the last ones. The Itanium series is a high-end server platform processor aimed at HPC.
Also referred to as the Itanium Kittson family of processors will be supplied until July 29, 2021 at the very latest. The series do not have much marketshare either, only thr HPE Integrity Superdome systems with HP-UX 11i v3 OS is fitted with these puppies. The Itanium 9700 (IA-64) line was released in 2017, with Intel already announcing that there was no successor in the planning. The 9700 line was already a modest update for the 9500-series code-named Poulson from 2012.
Over time it became apparent that x86-64 is a more logical path to follow for servers and enterprise, Itanium's performance also was not so shabby combined with an expensive chip production.
Eight new Spectre Variant Vulnerabilities for Intel Discovered - four of them critical - 05/03/2018 09:55 AM
News has just started spreading that researchers have sighted another eight Spectre like vulnerabilities in Intel processors, all resemble Spectre, four of them are critical. The new vulnerabilities ...
Intel discontinues some LGA775 and LGA1156 chips - 10/07/2011 10:05 AM
Intel has discontinued a couple more processors. It includes the Core i5-661 and Core i3-530 LGA1156 models, and the Pentium E5700, Celeron E3500 and E3400 (boxed only for the latter) LGA775 chips. Th...
Intel discusses Many Integrated Core Architecture (Larrabee) (video) - 06/10/2010 03:31 PM
If you like to know what intel is doing with its Larrabee architecure, have a look at the following video. It is a video demonstration of its Many Integrated Core Architecture at YouTube, this superco...
Intel Discontinues E2220 and QX9775 - 06/05/2009 06:45 AM
Both the E2220 and the QX9775 processors from Intel are going to be discontinued in October. This was announced by Intel today and doesn't really come as a surprise, considering that "Market dema...
Intel discontinuing several 45nm processors - 11/06/2008 11:22 AM
Earlier last week we already reported this was going to happen. Intel is
schmidtbag
Senior Member
Posts: 5642
Joined: 2012-11-10
Senior Member
Posts: 5642
Joined: 2012-11-10
#5635228 Posted on: 02/04/2019 02:43 PM
I'm aware, but if it was developed to the point where it was more viable who knows what would have came from that.
Eh... IA64 was released in 2001. Intel had 3 years to make it a compelling alternative to x86-46 and they had well over a decade to attempt to push it into markets beyond servers.
The truly best processors we could make, even relative to the era, will never be an x86 derivative.
But it seems at this rate we can't even be sure we'll live to see the day where something made from scratch to be superior will ever take over.
That's an interesting point and one I've considered myself. You're most likely right that there is a superior binary CISC architecture, vs x86 (and who knows, maybe that could've been IA64). This implies a few things:
* RISC architectures are still being developed and are showing some promising results. Furthermore, GPUs are compensating for a lot of computations that CPUs would be too power-hungry, slow, or expensive to perform.
* Binary computers as we know them are nearing EOL, at least in a way that actually matters (I'm sure we'll continue to see them for home PCs for decades). There's only so much more we can do to improve existing transistors. A lot of companies are investing in stuff like quantum computers or alternative to silicon-based transistors.
* With machine learning, it's possible we'll see a new architecture (maybe even x86 compatible) that can far surpass the performance of human design.
In short: there is massive potential in the future. We've been clinging onto old architectures with old technologies for a really long time and as far as I'm concerned, the only reason we haven't moved on to something better sooner is because too much closed-source software exists. As long as people aren't able to run their existing software on another platform, people won't switch, and therefore architectures like x86 dominate the CPU market, even though it's probably horribly inefficient for modern-day needs.
I'm aware, but if it was developed to the point where it was more viable who knows what would have came from that.
Eh... IA64 was released in 2001. Intel had 3 years to make it a compelling alternative to x86-46 and they had well over a decade to attempt to push it into markets beyond servers.
The truly best processors we could make, even relative to the era, will never be an x86 derivative.
But it seems at this rate we can't even be sure we'll live to see the day where something made from scratch to be superior will ever take over.
That's an interesting point and one I've considered myself. You're most likely right that there is a superior binary CISC architecture, vs x86 (and who knows, maybe that could've been IA64). This implies a few things:
* RISC architectures are still being developed and are showing some promising results. Furthermore, GPUs are compensating for a lot of computations that CPUs would be too power-hungry, slow, or expensive to perform.
* Binary computers as we know them are nearing EOL, at least in a way that actually matters (I'm sure we'll continue to see them for home PCs for decades). There's only so much more we can do to improve existing transistors. A lot of companies are investing in stuff like quantum computers or alternative to silicon-based transistors.
* With machine learning, it's possible we'll see a new architecture (maybe even x86 compatible) that can far surpass the performance of human design.
In short: there is massive potential in the future. We've been clinging onto old architectures with old technologies for a really long time and as far as I'm concerned, the only reason we haven't moved on to something better sooner is because too much closed-source software exists. As long as people aren't able to run their existing software on another platform, people won't switch, and therefore architectures like x86 dominate the CPU market, even though it's probably horribly inefficient for modern-day needs.
sykozis
Senior Member
Posts: 21798
Joined: 2008-07-14
Senior Member
Posts: 21798
Joined: 2008-07-14
#5635576 Posted on: 02/05/2019 02:23 AM
Without support from devs, on a massive scale, there is no replacing x86..... x86 survives out of necessity for backwards compatibility.
I'm aware, but if it was developed to the point where it was more viable who knows what would have came from that. The truly best processors we could make, even relative to the era, will never be an x86 derivative. But it seems at this rate we can't even be sure we'll live to see the day where something made from scratch to be superior will ever take over.
Without support from devs, on a massive scale, there is no replacing x86..... x86 survives out of necessity for backwards compatibility.
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Senior Member
Posts: 186
Joined: 2005-08-31
Actually, in the early 90s HP did envision EPIC to eventually become top-down architecture, but their partner (Intel) realized soon that HPC market was the most it will see. Itanium was the typical overly optimistic vision of its time, when skeptics were already declaring the dominant x86 obsolete and unsalable, ready for the grave. The future back in the 90s belonged to PowerPC, Alpha and Itanium -- all of them now burred under billions of x86-compatible CPUs in every possible market segment, while adding ARM on top of the lid.
That doesn't mean x86's cluttered ISA doesn't have to be dusted off at some point in time. There are already steps in compiler development to phase out the legacy x87 stack (together with MMX), since the x86-64 specs already depreciates it, and with AVX Intel finally began to think about smoother integration of future ISA extensions and register formats, by using prefixes.