The Itanium is an IA-64 microprocessor developed jointly by Hewlett-Packard and Intel.
Itanium
HP and Intel first collaborated on chip for servers and workstations in 1989. HP needed a next generation replacement for its successful PA-RISC line of servers and workstations, and wanted to tap Intel's volume and expertise in chip design and manufacturing.
It would use Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing, where the compiler would line up instructions for parallel execution. Features were added to ensure compatibility with both Intel x86 and HP UNIX applications. It was expected to dominate servers, workstations, and perhaps even desktops, bumping the ubiquitous x86 architecture.
Software support
Microsoft has ported Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 to Itanium. Microsoft server applications include SQL Server, Operations Manager, CRM Server, IIS, Visual Studio, and the .NET Framework. The decision was made in recent years to not include support for client applications or client operating systems (such as Windows XP) for the Itanium, because the market demand is too small to justify the porting and support costs.
Microsoft has announced support for Itanium on its upcoming Longhorn Server operating system. It is being positioned as the top end processor for the most demanding workloads such as database servers, operations management, and customer relationship management.
HP's UNIX operating system, HP-UX has been available on Itanium since the processor's introduction in 2001.
In June 2003 OpenVMS was added to the line up of operating systems able to run on these processors.
The HP NonStop operating system also runs on Itanium. NonStop is used in many of the world's trading and financial markets.
The Linux kernel and multiple GNU/Linux distributions run on Itanium, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Debian, and the version SGI offers on their Altix machines. In Jan 2002, Gelato.org, a community for the propagation of Linux on Itanium was created.
FreeBSD has supported Itanium systems since release 5.0.
Itanium support in NetBSD is currently (as of 2006) under development.
Sun developed a port of Solaris for Itanium, but later abandoned the effort in 2000[1].
IBM worked with SCO to port AIX to the Itanium processor as part of Project Monterey but this was never officially released "since continued delays in production availability of Itanium systems eroded the enthusiasm and critical solution support of partners and ISVs, while industry focus shifted toward the substantial growth and momentum of Linux on 32-bit Intel systems." [2]
An Itanium port of Tru64 UNIX was developed by Compaq [3], but canceled after HP's acquisition.
As of June 2006 there were over 8000 software applications running on Itanium servers offered by over 75 hardware vendors around the world.[1]
Market trends
The following companies announced a new "Itanium Alliance" in September 2005 to promote hardware and software development for the chip: Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Fujitsu, NEC, Unisys, Bull, Silicon Graphics, Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, Novell, BEA Systems, SAP, SAS, and Intel. [4]
Dell and IBM have dropped the chip from their product lines as the highend Itanium processor did not fit Dell's commodity volume business model and was a threat to IBM's own POWER processor architecture.[5][6]
Total revenue tripled for the Itanium from 2003–2004 and reached $1.4 billion in 2004.[7]
IDC, which once predicted that Itanium sales would reach $30 billion by the end of 2001, said in early 2006 that customer spending on Itanium servers hit $2.4 billion in 2005 and predicts it should increase to $6.6 billion in 2009.[8]
Intel launched the dual-core Montecito version of Itanium in July, 2006.
Technical criticism
The first version, code named Merced, shipped in June 2001. Manufactured in a 180 nm process, it was offered at speeds of 733 and 800 MHz, with a choice of 2 MB or 4 MB off-die L3 cache.
In IA-64 mode, it was the fastest floating point processor available in the marketplace. However, on integer calculations it performed only slightly better than an equivalently clocked x86 design, and when running legacy x86 code, performance was extremely poor, about 1/8th that of a similarly clocked x86 processor. Software emulation would have been faster as demonstrated in the Itanium 2 processor where legacy x86 code runs at the level of a similarly clocked x86 processor.
The main structural design flaw with the initial Itanium processor was the high latency of its level three cache. Intel's engineers had evidently been hoping that the amount of bandwidth available would offset this, but the latency was so high that it actually slowed the cache, to the point where it was not significantly faster than the main memory interface. With the faster first and second-level caches set relatively small (32 kB and 96 kB respectively), this further increased the load on the main system bus.
Compounding the performance impact of the lack of available cache bandwidth was the fact IA-64 code has a larger footprint than x86 code. So the number of instructions that could be contained in the cache was in fact even smaller than the sizes alone would suggest, all of which might have been mitigated had Itanium been designed around a fast processor bus. However, at a mere 266MHz it was only equal to consumer Athlons of the period, and a full 33% slower than first generation Pentium 4s. Again, this was worse than it would appear, due to the fact that Itaniums were designed to be used in systems with several processors. Itanium clock speeds were also disappointing, relative to the GHz speeds being delivered by the Athlon architecture of the period.
Overall, it is generally believed that the technical specifications indicate an original 1998–99 target launch date. But the repeated and lengthy project delays effectively meant the processor was out of date before it had even begun shipping. Hence, the Itanium was not a competitive product when launched, although it would have been two years earlier.
The original Itanium was succeeded by the Itanium 2 which delivered on the performance promises for the architecture with leadership benchmark results across a wide range of workloads.
Itanic nickname
Itanic is a derisive nickname coined by Scott McNealy and promulgated by the often-satiric technology publication The Register. It is a reference to Titanic, the famous ocean liner which sank in 1912. The IA-64 architecture is considered by some to be a white elephant, which cost Intel and partner Hewlett-Packard many billions of dollars while failing to achieve expected sales in the originally projected timeframe.
Competition
Sales of IA-64 processors have most recently been hampered by competition from AMD64 and EM64T 64-bit architectures on the low end. IBM's POWER architecture and Sun Microsystems' SPARC architecture compete at the high end. Some early IA-64 vendors, such as Dell and IBM, have dropped or drastically scaled back support for the architecture, Dell choosing commodity x86 processors with a focus on small servers in line with their high-volume business model, while IBM retreated from the threat of Itanium to protect its server business built on its own POWER architecture.
See also
References
- ^ "Product Brief: Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 Processor 9000 Series" (PDF). Intel Corporation. p. 8. Retrieved 2006-07-19.
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External links
- Itanium: A Cautionary Tale Intel takes over the world - with the lowly x86
- Intel Itanium opened cartridge processor images at cpu-collection.de
- Analyst firm offers rosy view of Itanium
- Intel Itanium technical specifications
- Intel Itanium developers' manuals