someone (someone@somewhere.com) on 2/6/09 wrote:
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>Linus Torvalds (torvalds@linux-foundation.org) on 2/6/09 wrote:
>---------------------------
>>
>>Intel could drop IPF tomorrow, and nobody would care.
>
>LOL, wish projection on your part.
>
>Not only does IPF refuse to die but it refuses to falter.
>IPF system sales have grown monotonically by $1B/yr
>for the last five years in a row. In contrast x86's growth
>has slowed significantly, even shrinking in revenue in
>Q2 and Q3.
>
>You have little more than your personal prejudices and
>biases to go on. Intel management knows how much it
>costs to develop brand new IPF microarchitectures, how
>much it costs to make IPF processors, what it can sell
>them for, and a damn good idea of the total available
>market open to IPF for any given combination of features,
>performance, and pricing. You can't imagine *anything*
>at all more important than clock rate yet Intel chose to
>sacrifice ~10% of the frequency of Tukwila, about 200
>MHz or more, to use flip-flops that are 100 times more
>resistant to soft errors than those used in its cheaper
>high volume products. Maybe those who were born into
>a PC mentality happily accept the occasional funny now
>and then but I am sure glad my banks don't. :-)
>

Is there anything (other than a desire to protect Itanium sales) preventing Intel from producing a Xeon variant made on the slower but more reliable process?

>Not only does Intel refuse to kill it but they keep ramping
>up the resources available to the IPF business group as
>sales grow. Since 2007 Intel has had two full processor
>design teams with over 1000 engineers designing two
>successive generations of processors beyond Tukwila.
>Those are not actions of a company reluctantly going
>through the motions to fulfill contractual obligations.
>Intel could have kept shrinking the I2 core into process
>after process with less than a 1/10th of the manpower
>and money it is investing. Intel also didn't have to let IPF
>skip right over 45 nm altogether and grant it equal timely
>access to 32 nm as Xeon MP.
>

I must've missed the press release - I wasn't aware that 32nm Xeons and Itaniums were available yet.

The fact is, Intel might, or might not, release 32nm Itaniums around the same time as 32nm Xeons. When it comes to Itanium Intel have consistently failed to meet release deadlines. Until such time as Intel can consistently and successfully execute their Itanium roadmaps, those roadmaps are little more than wishful thinking.

>IMO any rational person pondering the real viability of
>and business case for IPF should put far more weight
>on the *actions* of Intel than the *words* of somebody
>who has been increasingly laughably predicting doom
>since more than five years and about $20B worth of IPF
>sales ago.