[MLUG - DISCUSSION] IA64

[Dave Lloyd <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

OK, just for clarification, Itanium *is* out, and it sucks.  Performance
is lackluster and the only market out there is really for developers who
want to port to the IA64 architecture.  The first *real* IA64 bit chip
will be McKinley, which should release sometime around the middle of next
year.  Mind you, Intel is already years (literally) behind on this project.
By now, lots of big iron was supposed to be running IA64, but it's nowhere
near that.

Just about every major vendor dropped their plans for an itanium box when
they heard how bad the performance was.  

McKinley is supposed to be absolutely great at floating point stuff, but
sort of OK on integer stuff.  That means that lots of the heavy computational
sites will like McKinley, but as for servers, it may not give a very good
performance advantage over already existing 64 bit hardware.  The other
thing to remember is that the rest of the high end RISC chips have at least
another year (possibly more, given Intel's great ability to meet its time
commitments) to "catch up" to McKinley.  That's another year of Power3, 
MIPS, etc.  That's a whole lot of performance.  

In short, McKinley will have its niche, but don't expect IA64 to be the end
all be all of 64 bit chips.  There's still lots more out there that's great
already *and* compatible with existing apps and operating systems.

Dave Lloyd


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