see this:

http://insidehpc.com/2009/05/29/qa-with-hpc-virtualization-software-maker-scalemp/

HPC users can have access to large-scale SMP based on Nehalem, which is a much faster processor to begin with.

of course, for all those buying Superdome machines for large DB deployments... the waiting period still stands (extended).

The Itanium servers are absolutely brilliant.

I have six of these running OpenVMS and this combination is spectacular, great performance and great reliability. I disagree with many other comments made here, my thinking is that Intel usually makes good technical decisions and I am very confident that Tukwila will benefit from this decision.

Hehe yes its quite funny, its more or less what you said I think, because its Intel, and also prior to the launch of Itanium it was going to be the industry standard enterprise CPU that everyone would use instead of those silly companies with SPARC, PowerPC etc. In the end I was trying to think which OS's are now really used on Itanium and came to the conclusion HP-UX and VMS, VMS is being wound down anyway and HP-UX is being beat by AIX, Solaris and Linux. Im sure HP-UX would be in much better shape (in user base) if it had stuck with PA-RISC :S. There is also Tru64, not actaully sure if that ever got ported, Windows (like anyone wants to run that on Itanium) and Linux, some BSDs etc (dito).

Anyway, they cant say anything good about it thats true so doesnt really matter what bollocks they put in their propeganda ;)

So much for the 16 core Itanic...

So 2x the performance vs predecessor is great when moving from 2c to 4c? For a CPU that doesn't show up after a few months with twice the core count, but a few YEARS? I would have expected (a lot) better than twice the performance. After that much time, I would have expected each core to have twice the speed (and the connection to the RAM), resulting in nearly four times the performance for a 4c-CPU...
By 2010 Montvale times two will be as good as one core in a 8c-Xeon :-)

During final system-level testing, we identified an opportunity to further enhance application scalability

Once the translator activated with a premium bullshit filter applied as well, I got this translation:

"When we finally got to test it on live system it &^ucked up so badly we had to give in another 9 or 10 months to figure out how to get out of the mess."

You can't find something to bitch about, so you bitch about the fact that there is nothing to bitch about.

Did you ever say anything nice to anyone or are you always this negative?

"So, there's been two major schedule slips in the program, and each time, within a few weeks, Intel has come and announced that, well, maybe Tukwila isn't ready after all. Go figure!"

Sound like HP and Intel are playing schedule chicken - just wait for the other guy to blink and confess first.

Although, I haven't worked in HP since 2000 (I was with the original McKinley design team), I have quite a few contacts still within the company.

It turns out that in the period between 2006-2008, HP's high-end computer development group in Richardson Texas was decimated in order to consolidate power in Fort Collins Colorado. As a result, many if not most of their best firmware developers decided that maybe there are better places to work than HP (join the crowd I guess). Now it turns out that it is pretty difficult to train up new hires on the nuances of high-end server firmware design - after all, there's only so many places to gain such experience. Guess what happened to the schedule for the firmware for their high-end platform. Oops, that was "unexpected consequence"

Now the management team that killed HP's server team has been sacked, but that doesn't really solve the schedule problems they're having. I guess this is the end-result of putting major **ck-ups in positions of power in big companies.

So, there's been two major schedule slips in the program, and each time, within a few weeks, Intel has come and announced that, well, maybe Tukwila isn't ready after all. Go figure!

Are they implying that Itanium is the opposite of proprietary, that is, open? Or am I supposed to understand "proprietary" to mean bad and non-Intel, while Intel means "industry standard" because they say so?

He couldn't have, there's no spelling mistakes or puerile sniping at Nvidia...