Intel to Discontinue the Last of the Itaniums

Megalith

Megalith

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The Itanium line will soon be coming to an end: Intel announced this week the last chips on the market, the Itanium 9700-series (Kittson) processors, would be discontinued in 2021. Few tears will be shed, as the “Itanic” is considered a failure by most, having scared away vendors with its complex instruction word architecture. “At this point, the only systems that actually use Itanium 9700-series CPUs are the HPE Integrity Superdome machines.”

The first Itanium processors were supposed to ship in 1998, but despite the fact that Microsoft and other operating system vendors committed to supporting it, it turned out that Itanium’s very long instruction word (VLIW) architecture was too difficult to implement while maintaining the competitive prices and performance of other architectures, including the 32-bit x86 architecture. The first Itanium chip was delayed to 2001 and failed to impress most potential customers who stuck to their x86, Power and SPARC chips.
 
When you are getting your butt kicked or possibly about to... Time to scale back old and obsolete products? I feel like they are preparing for an unwanted and unpleasant intrusion by AMD.
 
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Is there any special application where using Itanium has any advantage to using x86 (or Power for that matter)?
 
I remember assembling and configuring some Itanium-equipped workstations about 15 years ago when I worked for HP. Those particular workstations special ordered by the customer were $17,000 units back then...
 
We ended up wtih one Itanium system at my old employer back in 2001/2. I don't think it ever got more than powered on for a couple hours.
 
DejaWiz said:
I remember assembling and configuring some Itanium-equipped workstations about 15 years ago when I worked for HP. Those particular workstations special ordered by the customer were $17,000 units back then...
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Itanium workstations were a thing? But why?
 
Glock24 said:
Is there any special application where using Itanium has any advantage to using x86 (or Power for that matter)?
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I would say probably not as it normally failed to get very good reviews compared to other things on the market especially trying to emulate x86, however you have software that is only designed to run on them. As somebody above hinted at, this was a replacement for those who ran software designed to run on a DEC (later HP) Alpha Server and on a VAX before that. There you would have seen use in telecom and government systems, so when people running OpenVMS systems had to upgrade from old hardware to new they were stuck in the Itanium system. As time when on they probably all moved over to windows / *nix systems that removed the limit to stay on the hardware.
 
SvenBent said:
I really liked the idea of Iternaium.
new fresh instructions set with a different view on code optimization.

Sadly the execution clearly did not make the promises come through
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The execution as in something hatched from the start for market dominance snd absolute control by HP and Intel? That Itanium?
 
I'm actually impressed Intel stuck with it this long. They must have made some really strong commitments when they first marketed them.
 
Paul_Johnson said:
We ended up wtih one Itanium system at my old employer back in 2001/2. I don't think it ever got more than powered on for a couple hours.
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We actually purchased a few workstations at my employer during the same timeframe (circa 2001).
For our application (Computational Fluid Dynamics) the Itanium actually kicked ass and took names, and was easily the highest performing platform bar none.
Sadly, I think CFD was one of the very few things Itanium did well, and certainly a niche market. Still, for that niche, I couldn't have been happier at the time.
 
IA-64, aka the Itanium ISA, was really clunky from the get-go.
Not going to be sad to see these go away.

Intel is also discontinuing their Xeon Phi line of co-processors as well, which should be ending support this year if I remember correctly.
 
I didn't know it was still around to be honest... Thought it died and was buried years ago.
 
Meeho said:
Itanium workstations were a thing? But why?
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Think of a 2-4U server chassis converted into a desktop chassis, because that's essentially what they were.

8 SCSI HDDs
2 ODDs
Fiber optic network port
A shload of ECC RDIMM sockets
Etc
Etc
Etc

They weren't light, either. Fully decked out, they weighed in excess of 150 lbs each.
 
DejaWiz said:
Think of a 2-4U server chassis converted into a desktop chassis, because that's essentially what they were.

8 SCSI HDDs
2 ODDs
Fiber optic network port
A shload of ECC RDIMM sockets
Etc
Etc
Etc

They weren't light, either. Fully decked out, they weighed in excess of 150 lbs each.
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Very practical, lol. What kind of workstation usage would they be used for, though?
 
AlphaFox said:
If they had sealed the bulkheads at the top then it would stay afloat indefinitely. fools!
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The Itanic was made out of recycled Chinese newspaper and processing waste from a local chicken slaughter factory, it was doomed to sink from the outset.
 
VIC-20 said:
Also some very boring stuff like payroll systems on OpenVMS.
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Highly unlikely the units I built and configured were being utilized for that usage scenario back then. I may be wrong.
 
DejaWiz said:
Highly unlikely the units I built and configured were being utilized for that usage scenario back then. I may be wrong.
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Sorry, I just meant that's what I've seen these machines have been used for. Even ridiculously overbuilt. I have no idea what your builds did and didn't mean to imply that.
 
VIC-20 said:
Sorry, I just meant that's what I've seen these machines have been used for. Even ridiculously overbuilt. I have no idea what your builds did and didn't mean to imply that.
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No worries what so ever.
 
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