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Microsoft ditches Itanium support
DEVELOPER WITH ENTERPRISE ASPIRATIONS Microsoft has announced that it will cease supporting Intel's Itanium systems after its Server 2008 R2 operating system.
The announcement, made by Dan Reger, a Volish senior technical product manager, effectively sounds the death knell for the chip. The Itanic, as we call it, which has never really seen better days, is effectively an eyesore in Intel's otherwise impressive product line and remains a testament to the billions on investment and engineering effort that Chipzilla ploughed into the chip, which it mistakenly believed would eventually power all the 'big tin' servers out there.
Reger announced that Windows Server 2008 R2 "mainstream support" for Itanium will cease on July 9, 2013 and "extended support" will end on July 10, 2018. That timeframe doesn't mean Itanium customers who run the Vole's software on their oversized number crunchers have to man panic stations just yet, but those considering investing in high-end server kit, typically a decision that sticks for decades, will have to think doubly hard whether they want to throw money into the sinking Itanic.
Surprisingly Reger blames the Vole's cessation of support not on Itanium's poor sales record or it being a dead-end platform but rather on the stellar performance of multi-core chips from both Intel and AMD. He goes on to point to NEC's Xeon 7560 powered server, which recently broke the record on the TPC-E benchmark. In fact only one of the top 10 performers on that benchmark uses Itanium chips. After looking at those figures it's hard not to agree with Reger's main point, why bother with Itanium?
Microsoft's announcement lagged behind that of Linux distribution vendor Red Hat, which also announced the end of its support for Itanium back in January. For those who really want to stick with Itanium, the latest version of FreeBSD, 8.0, still has support for the IA64 architecture, while not too surprisingly the hobbyists at NetBSD, who have ported a version of the system to a toaster, haven't found the Itanic useful enough to warrant their time and effort. µ
Tags: Microsoft
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The only thing that saddens me about the coming demise of Itanic is that we'll never find out how much money Intel sank into that hole. Itanic did, however, serve its initial purpose in poisoning the futures of all the 64-bit RISC architectures that Intel didn't own.
This thing needed a bullet in the head a long time ago. Intel should have simply created an enterprise-class (i.e. RAS features) 64-bit Xeon earlier.
I still wouldn't be surprised if Intel kept flushing money down the toilet to keep the IA64 zombie alive for several more years.
To do otherwise is to admit defeat to AMD64. And admitting defeat to a much smaller competitor would be a real nasty tasting piece of humble pie.
at the end of this article there was a google advertisement that said:
Intel Itanium 2
Server processors. Check out Intel's roadmap!
As I kept telling Paul Demone, its a dead platform. Yah, yah, just wait for the next version, I know Paul. LOL!
What about Wintel?
Intel and Microsoft should fight together against AMD and linux.
The Inquirer has always referred to the Itanium as the Itanic. It ceased support for other Itanium names years ago, far ahead of Microsoft AND Red Hat.
Since when ? Since shortly after its announcement. In other words, they nearly always refer to it that way here. Do some searches here for Itanium and you will see.
"The Itanic, as we call it,..." Since when did the Inq dumb it down like that? What next, will you stop using the word Vole because it confuses people?
life goes on I guess :-)