Itanium--one step forward, one back

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Itanium ahead of its time

The Itanium EPIC architecture IS a great leap forward, technologically. It makes TONS of sense in a purely academic viewpoint. The problem facing Itanium is the same one facing Linux - inertia of the market. The ONLY time I have EVER seen this kind of inertia overcome, was with M$ weaning people off of DOS (which had a LOT of inertia).

The x86 processor today is a convoluted mess of archaic memory addressing. NOTHING is streamlined, nor has it EVER been "modernized". I havent seen the 64bit extensions, but they must be entangled with this "backward" (very appropriate word) "compatable" legacy. The RISC chips (such as SPARC or PPC,G4) were second generation and had some very good improvements over CISC (x86). This is one reason that Apple can claim they are faster, with lower clock speeds. The EPIC instruction set is just the next evolution of the chip. Why wouldn't people flock to them?

Intel has taken FOREVER to get this thing out. It is overpriced by AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE over its other chips (and HP went with Intel to SAVE MONEY on its processors!). It is SLOW compared with other Intel chips (although 9Mb of cache is pretty darn nice). But these are SMALL problems compared with the doozy - You have to re-think the way you write applications, and you have to re-compile everything to make software for the Itanic. Changing the way people program, and waiting for optimizing compiler technology to get better is the "perfect storm" that keeps Itanic from ever gaining a foothold.

Posted by: Roger Ramjet   Posted on: 01/06/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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