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Intel to Remove Xeon's Advantages to Push Itanium

Intel to Remove Xeon's Advantages to Push Itanium:

After nearly a decade of 64-bit processing in the RISC server market, it might be reasonable to accept that 64-bit computing for Intel X86 processors was a foregone conclusion. Since 1996, Intel has been making the case publicly for its 64-bit Itanium and its EPIC (explicitly parallel instruction computing) instruction set. It has not been an easy run for Intel, but the company has a plan to make Itanium take off: Remove the advantages that 32-bit Xeons have on Itaniums, and stress the advantages the Itanium architecture brings.

Whenever a discussion of Xeon versus Itanium begins, it inevitably ends with a discussion of a 64-bit variant of the Pentium 4 core. So let's get this out of the way right now. Itanium is a radically new core that Intel and HP designed for the long haul, and they expected a very long ramp up. One of the things that was not on the public roadmaps that executives in Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group was presenting yesterday in a meeting with press and analysts was the co-called "Yamhill" 64-bit version of the Pentium 4 processor that people have been talking about for several years.

It is no secret that some of the server vendors--especially those who are not enthusiastic about the jump from the P4 to Itanium instruction sets and/or who have their own RISC/Unix markets to protect--would love to see Itanium go the way of all flesh and to see Intel bring out an Opteron-like processor that supports 32-bit and 64-bit modes on the same P4 core. No server maker admits this publicly, but privately they sure do.

posted Tue 27 Jan 2004 in /computers/ia64 | link

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