Intel neuters Montvale, Itanic screams in alarm

INTEL CASTRATED MONTVALE a couple of weeks ago. The chip was supposed to be the 65 nanometre shrink of Montecito, the great white hope for Itanium's future, with enough tweaks to make it a solid upgrade. Instead of that, the plug on the project was basically pulled, and it will be a 90 nanometre chip with the most minor of upgrades, a little more cache, and some other enhancements.

Now if you look at the competitive landscape, Monty will catch IPF up to Power 5, but sadly Power 5+ will be out by then. IPF will be a generation behind once again. By the time Montvale limps out the door, there will be Power 6, and barring a monumental screwup by IBM, it will only widen the gap to IPF. Then it is up to Tukwila, the newly coined four core variant with the tweaks Montvale was in line for, to take up the banner against Power 6+.

This is a classic gun to a knife fight scenario, and Intel is way outclassed. It is doing exactly what Compaq and HP did to kill Alpha. First, you kill the workstations to scare off developers. With no workstations, your software base shrinks, and your markets decrease. With each market retreat, there is less incentive to do well next time, and the product gets worse.

Soon after that, it is in such miserable shape, no one cares if you pull the plug. That is what Intel is doing to Itanium. There is nothing on the roadmap now that would make it competitive vs Power, or even x86. Montvale's neutering is just the tip of the iceberg. µ