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Itanium (formerly called IA-64)

IA-64 is the architecture of the latest models, as opposed to IA-32 of the earlier ones, it's always been called Itanium except when it's being called Itanic, and it's really not anything you'd be interested in.
 
The 9300s are "LGA 1248", but load onto cards to slot into a motherboard.

It's not really a desktop chip, more a specialized server/"super computer" kind of product built for mass parrelelism. You need to code things specifically for it so direct comparisons are hard...but the top 500 super computer index has way more Xeons (372) on than Itaniums (0)...and it's kind of life support...
 
AIUI intel's dream was to take over a large chunk of the UNIX market with Itanium and then work downwards into more regular computers. They convinced HP to support them in this and HP migrated their two UNIX platforms (VMS and HP-UX) from HPPA and Alpha to Itanium. They also convinced microsoft to port windows and someone (not sure if it was Intel or a third party) ported linux..

But performance when running existing 32-bit PC code was absoloutely terrible (to the point that software based emulators were faster than the hardware support and the hardware support was dropped in later models) and even performance when running native 64-bit itanium code was underwhelming. Furthermore AMD added a 64-bit extension to their x86 processors without compromising on 32-bit performance and Intel reluctantly followed them. The result is itanium never really caught on.

Afaict the only real reason why itanium is still alive today is because HP don't want to force their UNIX customers through a second migration. MS has announced that Windows Server 2008 R2 will be the last version of windows with itanium support and afaict linux support hangs by a thread.

P.S. IA-32 is another name for the conventional PC architecture introduced with the 386, it has nothing to do with the itanium.
 
Actually, I doubt the Itanium is faster than i7. For instance, the IBM mainframe cpus, the most enterprise z196 at 5.26GHz and almost 200MB of cpu cache which is the "worlds fastest cpu" according to IBM:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/z196-mainframe-microprocessor,11168.html
Is actually really slow. It is much slower than a high end x86 cpu. The largest fully equipped z196 mainframe with maximum number of cpus, gives 50.000 MIPS in total.

If you use a 8-socket x86 server, you get 3.200 MIPS under software emulation using the Mainframe emulator TurboHercules. But software emulation is 5-10x slower, so in reality a 8-socket x86 server gives 5-10x of 3.200 MIPS. If you run native code. This shows that Mainframe z196 cpu is actually much slower than a high end x86 cpu. The newest Mainframe cpu, z12 is 50% faster than z196. This makes the z12 slightly faster than the z196 - which is slower than x86.

The reason Mainframe cpus are shitload expensive, is because of RAS. They have very good RAS. They double check every calculation and detect errors, and takes them offline if errors, etc - all this RAS needs tailor made solution which is very expensive. The reason Enterprise gear is expensive is because of tailor made solutions, RAS is expensive. Performance is not expensive.

The same with Itanium. It has good RAS (some Mainframes are using Itanium). But I doubt it has any performance to speak of. But there are offical SPECint benchmarks, just compare them to i7 and see.
 
aminhamaeelinda said:
How much faster is this itanium processor comparing to a top of the line i7?
what socket does it use?
Click to expand...
Depends on the metric. :p Those 2 processors are made for very different markets, with the Itanium 9300/9500 targeted to "big iron" (mainframes) with reliability features that are not available in desktop or even Xeon processors... yet.

To show the processors in their best light, SPEC is an architecture neutral benchmark for CPUs. For uniprocessor systems, here are the best SPEC2006 submissions for examples of each chip:

Itanium 9140m (dual core, 1.66GHz, 18MB L3, 90nm process... lol 2007)
CINT2006 16.8
CFP2006 20.2

i7-3770K (quad core, 3.5GHz/3.9GHz)
CINT2006 53.2
CFP2006 66.2

The Itanium 9560 is the current fastest model, but it's made for MP systems. There are no results for 1p 9300/9500 processors so it's hard to directly compare. Here is one i7-3770K vs 2 Tukwila Itaniums:

The same i7-3770K as above
CINT2006 rate 189
CFP2006 rate 130

2 x Itanium 9350 (1.73GHz/1.86GHz, 4 cores per chip, 24MB L3, 3 years old, 65nm process)
CINT2006 rate 134
CFP2006 rate 136

(The current fastest Itanium, the 9560, runs at 2.53GHz and has 8 cores per chip. I can't find any SPEC submissions yet. It launched a few months ago. It may very well match a single i7-3770K in CINT2006 rate and exceed it in CFP2006 rate, all for the low price of $4650. :p)

The latest news is that HP's CEO du jour no longer wants to fund development of Itanium, so the launched Poulson model, which was supposed to be the next generation with leading edge manufacturing process and common Xeon socket is pretty much scrapped at this point. The Poulson which was released turns out to be a 32nm shrink with 2x more cores per chip and uarch tweaks. Between that and Oracle's drama, Itanium's future is pretty much zombie now. It will continued to be supported, but HP will probably switch to Xeon as Itanium continues to fall behind in performance.
 
Still, is it possible to buy Itanium Poulsen x2 with motherboard?
I don't see any sellings.
May be because all those chips are being well used?
 
I remember assembling and testing Itanium-based HP workstations a while ago. Pretty cool stuff, but damn they carried a serious price tag.


sanaris said:
Still, is it possible to buy Itanium Poulsen x2 with motherboard?
I don't see any sellings.
May be because all those chips are being well used?
Click to expand...

Yes, it's possible to buy them, but you'll have to call HP Sales.

No, all the chips aren't being used - it's because of their very specialized/proprietary design and intended use, their exorbitant price tags, and their lack of industry-standard compatibility that is driving everyone to just buy Xeon or Opteron based solutions.
 
Well, it IS about the Itanium, which could be said was developed from the beginning while under the effects of said narcotics respiratory delivery device.
 
Last I read, IA-64 techs will be slowly merged into Xeon and dumped by 2017/18. Dead platform.
 
A 2 day old n00b bumped this and all of his posts are nonsensical, probably spamming to 50 (or whatever) for FS/FT
 
at least i enjoyed reading about Itanium, so even a crack pipe spammer can actually do something good, unintentionally :)
 
geok1ng said:
at least i enjoyed reading about Itanium, so even a crack pipe spammer can actually do something good, unintentionally :)
Click to expand...

True...but his post was deleted in entirety. Definitely a FSpammer.
 
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