David Kanter (dkanter@realworldtech.com) on 2/6/09 wrote:
>
>So, I'm curious, what recommendations would you make for
>improving the Itanium 2 core?
>
>the most obvious would be move to a single bundle core,
>perhaps add OOO. Or you could go niagara style to hide
>latency...

Realistically? There's not a lot Intel can do that makes
any kind of economic sense. "Leave the thing behind" has
been my recommendation since before they even released it
in the first place.

They can't do the niagara thing, because their only market
simply isn't remotely interested. They can't do the OoO
thing (even though I think they should, just to make it
interesting), since that implies putting a lot of resources
on it, and their market is too small for that to make sense.

So what Intel appears to be doing is leaving the
dang thing to die, but releasing these "let's put pieces
of technology we already had" Frankenstein's monster cpu's
every once in a while.

I can visualize the meetings: "Let's bolt on QPI, we'll
just dig it out of the verilog that the Core i7 people
left behind". Or "Let's tack on another core - that way
we can claim that it's twice as fast, without actually
having to design anything".

The most interesting thing IPF ever did was that half-assed
and sorry half-baked SoEMT thing. And you can still see the
bolts in the forehead from that one.

So what Intel could try to do is to make a single-banger
speed-racer design. Put a small crack team of crazy people
on it, and let them go wild. If for no other reason than to
at least look alive next to a POWER6. Go for frequency, go
for simplicity, go for anything: just admit that the
old core sucked.

Take a chance, for chissake! Intel literally has absolutely
nothing to lose on it. Go out in a blaze of glory, not this
disgusting "let's wipe our asses one more time and see what
we come up with" strategy.

Or just kill the damn thing off. Don't make those ludicrous
claims about keeping it alive until 22nm. Do anything but
the "more of the same proven failure".

The definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over
and over, and thinking that the end result is going to be
different". And quite frankly, Intel's strategy wrt Itanium
has been insane according to that simple definition.

Sure, hitting your head against the wall over and over
might make the wall crumble. But more likely it just
makes your head hurt. Try another approach, already.

As it is, Itanium just makes Intel look bad. They'd be
better off using it as a technology demonstration of crazy
features ("look what we can do in 32nm at 800W in a lab,
using our experimental Itanium chip") and never sell a
single one.

But instead, they keep dragging their name through mud by
comparing themselves with Sparc. It's like Michael Phelps
crowing about getting a gold medal in the Special Olympics.

Sure, it's a gold medal, but you're just debasing yourself.
You've shown that you don't have to compete against gimps
to do well (Core2/Core i7). Why are you competing against
people who can't do better? Pick on somebody your own size,
for chissake!

So every time I see Itanium compared against Sparc I just
feel like Intel should be ashamed of themselves, and that
the person doing the comparison should just leave it be.
It doesn't make Intel look any better, and Sun doesn't
need that kind of "kick them while they're still twitching"
either.

I'm sorry, I just don't see the point.

Linus