X-bit labs

Intel Pushes Itanium 2 Lineup into Mainstream (page 4)

Category: Editorial

by Anton Shilov

[ 08/23/2004 | 02:53 AM ]

Transition to IA64 Still Years Away

So, after all the infrastructure issues are solved out, the Itanium- and Xeon-based platforms cost the same amount of money and are fully compatible on the hardware level, the main thing Intel will have to do is to convince end-users to choose the IA64, a processor architecture that performs slowly in widely available applications these days and that is not the only 64-bit tech around.

Current roadmaps of Intel and AMD show that both are pretty confident in further evolution of x86 architecture, therefore, it is unlikely that the development of x86 chips will be scrapped in 5-6 years time. However, with extreme clock-speeds of Intel Xeon and Pentium 4 chips at some point further evolution and performance may be limited by fabrication technology processes. Since the Itanium 2 chips can perform more operations per clock than the Xeon or Pentium 4 chips, at some point it may be more cost-effective to produce IA64 rather than IA32 CPUs. Furthermore, someday there will be applications that demand extreme processing power only the Itanium 2, or competing chips from other makers, will be able to deliver cost-efficiently.

“Intel’s strategy is to align the prices of individual products to meet the needs of each market segment. In addition, this move is the next step toward achieving Intel’s goal of delivering Itanium 2-based systems with up to twice the performance as Intel Xeon processor-based systems for the same system cost in 2007,” said Radoslaw Ceplin, an Intel’s spokesperson.

With server and workstation customers beginning to transit to the IA64 in 2007 timeframe Intel may begin the desktop onslaught of the Itanium architecture late this decade. Fortunately for the company Microsoft promised to add support of the Itanium into the upcoming operating system code-named Longhorn and has already implemented Execution Layer 32, a yet another way to improve performance of 32-bit when running on computers based on Intel Itanium 2 processors, into Windows XP 64-bit Edition and Windows Server 2003 SP1. Adding Itanium support into the most-popular operating systems means that the world’s main driving force of technologies – Microsoft Corp. – is very serious about Intel’s EPIC micro-architecture.

NEC servers powered by Intel Itanium 2, picture by NEC

The main thing desktop computers require is a broad range of applications that is used for daily needs, but software developers want either a broad installation base, or a clear message that there will be broad installation base and the market for their applications, before they proceed to develop programs that take advantage of any processing architecture. With a top-to-bottom lineup of Itanium 2 chips Intel is sending is such message to software developers.