All off topic discussions go here. Everything from the funny thing your cat did to your favorite tv shows. Non-programming computer questions are ok too.
oracle wrote:
When Oracle announced it was stopping development of software for the Itanium microprocessor, HP Executive VP in charge of HP’s enterprise hardware business David Donatelli responded by saying, “Oracle would put enterprises and governments at risk while costing them hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity.” Just the opposite is true. Oracle has an obligation to give our customers adequate advanced notice when Oracle discontinues development on any software product or hardware platform so our customers have the information they need to plan and manage their businesses. HP is well aware that Intel’s future direction is focused on X86 and that plans to replace Itanium with X86 are already in place. HP is knowingly withholding this information from our joint Itanium customers. While new versions of Oracle software will not run on Itanium, we will support existing Oracle/Itanium customers on existing Oracle products. In fact, Oracle is the last of the major software companies to stop development on Itanium.
reporter wrote:
Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel Corporation: “We remain firmly committed to delivering a competitive, multi-generational roadmap for HP-UX and other operating system customers that run the Itanium architecture.” Poulson is Intel’s next generation 32nm 8 core based Itanium chip, and is on track to more than double the performance of the existing Tukwila architecture. Kittson is an officially committed roadmap product for Itanium beyond Poulson and is also in active development.
Is that a new tri-bool(live, dead and zombie should be more appropriate, as the right order is true, false and filenotfound)?
If I had to chose, I'd say quantum (more or less) superposition would be best (it's all AND nothing ).
</boring_rant>
bewing wrote:Dead, zombie, or live product? Your guess?
It's still hard to say. Itanium has given the impression of being dead or dying for a very long time; but that's mostly only because it's been limited to a niche market (e.g. enterprise systems where fault tolerance and/or scalability features are needed that 80x86 doesn't provide).
How much effect Oracle's decision has on the future of Itanium will depend on how many of these niche customers use Oracle's product/s in the first place, and whether or not there's a viable alternative (e.g. MySQL, IBM's DB2).
I'd also say that mostly Itanium's future depends on Intel's willpower. Unless 80x86 dies Intel can afford to lose massive bucket-loads of cash on Itanium (and maybe write it off as a "relatively small" expense that helps keep competition away from their high-end 80x86 products while also keeping good engineers employed so that Intel doesn't have to watch these engineers find jobs at competing companies).
Cheers,
Brendan
For all things; perfection is, and will always remain, impossible to achieve in practice. However; by striving for perfection we create things that are as perfect as practically possible. Let the pursuit of perfection be our guide.
Oracle pointed out that some other major companies, such as Microsoft, have also stopped developing software for Itanium. Intel countered by saying that the new version of the processor, known as Poulson, is proof of Intel's commitment to Itanium.
I would guess Dead but like Brendan said it is hard to say.
"The best way to prepare for programming is to write programs, and
to study great programs that other people have written." - Bill Gates
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