New Intel Itanium Processor 9500 Delivers Breakthrough Capabilities

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In an era of unprecedented growth in data usage, businesses require powerful computing solutions that can deliver scalable and resilient performance to run IT's mission-critical applications. The new Intel® Itanium® processor 9500 series is more than twice as powerful as the previous generation, making it ideal for today's most demanding workloads, including business analytics, database, and large-scale enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. Systems based on Intel's Itanium processors run in more than three-quarters of the World's Global 100 companies across industries such as aerospace, energy, life sciences and telecommunications. With the Intel Itanium processor 9500 series, these industries will benefit from a leap in performance and an increase in world-class reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) capabilities.
 
I didn't even realize that Intel was still making the Itanium series of processors. They must be selling enough to justify the cost if they're developing new models that deliver breakthrough capabilities that make them idea for today's demanding workloads including business analytics, database, and large-scale enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications! I can't wait to see the huge differences this make in the aerospace, energy, life sciences, and telecommunications industries!
 
I didn't either. I thought hybrid 32/64-bit Xeon processors replaced Itanium.
 
The Itanium still sells but it isn't a mainstream IT solution as their marketing sometimes indicates. To this day I've only seen one or two of them in the field. Even most larger companies I've worked with don't use them.
 
I didn't either. I thought hybrid 32/64-bit Xeon processors replaced Itanium.

From what I understand there are specific applications and calculations in which Itanium excels at. The performance of IA-64 based architectures far exceeds EM64T based Xeons in those situations. Their drawback is the inability to run X86, or X86-64/EM64T optimized code. Their usage is highly specialized though. HP used to pimp them big time but I think even they dropped most of their Itanium based models.
 
From what I understand there are specific applications and calculations in which Itanium excels at. The performance of IA-64 based architectures far exceeds EM64T based Xeons in those situations. Their drawback is the inability to run X86, or X86-64/EM64T optimized code. Their usage is highly specialized though. HP used to pimp them big time but I think even they dropped most of their Itanium based models.

HP tried to drop support all together but was sued, and made to continue support for them. Itanium CPU's almost were pulled off of life support more than a few times in the past couple of years.
 
HP tried to drop support all together but was sued, and made to continue support for them. Itanium CPU's almost were pulled off of life support more than a few times in the past couple of years.

They need to let it go.
 
The sad thing about Itanium is it's always been a BIG chip, but relegated to 1 or 2 process nodes behind. I mean it's kind of a catch 22, you need it on a modern process to be really good, but to justify it on the modern process it needs to be popular enough to sell well enough to pay for it.
 
The sad thing about Itanium is it's always been a BIG chip, but relegated to 1 or 2 process nodes behind. I mean it's kind of a catch 22, you need it on a modern process to be really good, but to justify it on the modern process it needs to be popular enough to sell well enough to pay for it.

It makes you wonder what Itanium could be with some serious R&D behind it.
 
The sad thing about Itanium is it's always been a BIG chip, but relegated to 1 or 2 process nodes behind. I mean it's kind of a catch 22, you need it on a modern process to be really good, but to justify it on the modern process it needs to be popular enough to sell well enough to pay for it.

If you read the article, it suggests that the only reason Intel has been developing Itanium's for as long as they have is because HP has been paying (at least partially) for their development costs.

They were doing this due to their promise to continue to support the platform for an extended period of time.

The finally got tired of doing this and tried to cut their losses, and discontinue the platform, and that's when they were sued by Oracle, so they are likely going to ahve to continue to pay Intel to work on a product that loses them money.

Not an enviable position to be in, and a good example why it is not always a good idea to make long term promises as regards new technology before it has been established in the marketplace.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039310604 said:
If you read the article, it suggests that the only reason Intel has been developing Itanium's for as long as they have is because HP has been paying (at least partially) for their development costs.

They were doing this due to their promise to continue to support the platform for an extended period of time.

The finally got tired of doing this and tried to cut their losses, and discontinue the platform, and that's when they were sued by Oracle, so they are likely going to ahve to continue to pay Intel to work on a product that loses them money.

Not an enviable position to be in, and a good example why it is not always a good idea to make long term promises as regards new technology before it has been established in the marketplace.

Stop spreading misinformation...

Oracle wanted to drop support for the Itanium, not HP...
 
I saw one as a test box for a cluster-compute project at the university I attended, but they decided against it pretty quickly and went with x86-64 commodity boxes instead. Sun's if I recall...

Imagine if Apple switched to iTanium processors instead of standard x86 processors back in the day. You'd see them on modern processes then I guess, and it would solve the compatability issue since they jumped ship anyways... Guess they'd never get a notebook CPU out of it though, which was the point of the switch supposedly...
 
I saw one as a test box for a cluster-compute project at the university I attended, but they decided against it pretty quickly and went with x86-64 commodity boxes instead. Sun's if I recall...

Imagine if Apple switched to iTanium processors instead of standard x86 processors back in the day. You'd see them on modern processes then I guess, and it would solve the compatability issue since they jumped ship anyways... Guess they'd never get a notebook CPU out of it though, which was the point of the switch supposedly...

That, and IBM's repeated failure to produce a 3GHz PPC970 for three years, IIRC...
 
That, and IBM's repeated failure to produce a 3GHz PPC970 for three years, IIRC...

It wasn't just that, the 970 processors simply had too high of a TDP and ran too hot for notebooks.
Also, the G4 processors were produced by Motorola, so Apple was splitting the sales between both Motorola and IBM, making both of their expenses go through the roof with little return on their efforts.

Basically Motorola and IBM had enough of Apple's bullshit and both jumped ship before things got out of control (they already were), so Apple was basically forced to end up going with Intel processors, of which they had always had OS X from 10.0 on running on x86 platforms, just in case.
I can't blame Motorola or IBM for doing what they did, Apple really did have them by the balls for a long time.

It would be interesting to see the IA-64 architecture finally start to do something in the industry, though I doubt it will be much.
 
It wasn't just that, the 970 processors simply had too high of a TDP and ran too hot for notebooks.
Also, the G4 processors were produced by Motorola, so Apple was splitting the sales between both Motorola and IBM, making both of their expenses go through the roof with little return on their efforts.

Basically Motorola and IBM had enough of Apple's bullshit and both jumped ship before things got out of control (they already were), so Apple was basically forced to end up going with Intel processors, of which they had always had OS X from 10.0 on running on x86 platforms, just in case.
I can't blame Motorola or IBM for doing what they did, Apple really did have them by the balls for a long time.

It would be interesting to see the IA-64 architecture finally start to do something in the industry, though I doubt it will be much.

PSHA...too hot for notebooks. There are companies that stick like 100 watt SLI video cards into laptops. That's a stoopid excuse not to do something.
 
PSHA...too hot for notebooks. There are companies that stick like 100 watt SLI video cards into laptops. That's a stoopid excuse not to do something.

Only real pros stick four IBM POWER7 CPUs into their notebooks.

5559678628_3e898f87de.jpg


Yes, my notebook also looks like it doubles as a 2U server, but lots of people make that mistake. :p
 
Only real pros stick four IBM POWER7 CPUs into their notebooks.

5559678628_3e898f87de.jpg


Yes, my notebook also looks like it doubles as a 2U server, but lots of people make that mistake. :p

Try to limit the confusion please...don't show a 4U server then talk about a laptop that's 2u thick, which was really referred to as a DTR in the first place.
 
Try to limit the confusion please...don't show a 4U server then talk about a laptop that's 2u thick, which was really referred to as a DTR in the first place.

You've discovered my secret! :eek:
 
If I remember correctly, Intel is legally required to continue making Itanium processors because of the mission-critical companies that still use them. I saw and read an article about this about 2-3 years ago.
 
No, you're thinking of SkribbelKat.

I do admit to having Windows 8. I even bought it to "upgrade" Vista Business. Though, it's been a little while and I think I'm gonna just go clone the Vistal Business install back onto the computer again because, like besides booting faster, it's like sort of slow to actually use for any productivity stuff.

I think TinyCore Linux is a lot better than Windows 8 because it literally has an identical feature set, but runs on a billionth of the hardware. It has a walled garden application store (that's free), it limits writes to internal storage so its flash friendly, it has lots of options for office suites and web browsers and there are some games available. Plus you basically choose what stuff you want and, just like Windows 8, it doesn't come with a media player program. The UI is tons faster though and you have your choice of window managers which is better by far than Windows 8.
 
^ Blasphemy!
heatlesssun, take this disbeliever and throw him into the pit of despair and Windows training!

:p
 
The Itanium still sells but it isn't a mainstream IT solution as their marketing sometimes indicates. To this day I've only seen one or two of them in the field. Even most larger companies I've worked with don't use them.
And more annoyingly, Microsoft doesn't separate the Itanium updates for Windows Server from the standard ones in WSUS; it's all-or-nothing.

Irritating how much of a waste of space that can be on one's WSUS box when so few folks are running the hardware.
 
And more annoyingly, Microsoft doesn't separate the Itanium updates for Windows Server from the standard ones in WSUS; it's all-or-nothing.

Irritating how much of a waste of space that can be on one's WSUS box when so few folks are running the hardware.

You should use a better patch management system... Like LANDesk :)
 
If I remember correctly, Intel is legally required to continue making Itanium processors because of the mission-critical companies that still use them. I saw and read an article about this about 2-3 years ago.
Legality aside, Intel and HP entered into a 10 year development/ecosystem pact a few years ago. I'm sure certain big iron customers wanted that and other assurances of support. If anything, what's legally binding about that is just contracts between HP and customers and between HP and Intel.

It's only Charlie and Oracle who claimed that Intel is canceling Itanium. Intel has been making roadmaps available every year for the uarch, so those claims have always been a little anti-reality. There have been plans made public to bring Itanium to process parity for around 3 years. It looks like that has slipped away from 22nm due to delays (again).
 
You should use a better patch management system... Like LANDesk :)
How much does WSUS cost? Oh, yeah, it's free. Landesk costs money.

We have to manage multiple patch management systems depending on client budget and resources. This means WSUS and Shavlik, generally. Smaller companies don't have the financial resources for a commercial patch management system.

WSUS isn't perfect, but personally, I think Microsoft needs a little more evolution on that front, seeing as 3.0SP2 (plus the new security patch) is as far as it has gone. It would benefit them as much as it would IT.
 
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