The collected works of Rhys

http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/ ... anium.aspx

I do not like this at all, but since Itanium is increasingly losing ground to POWER and that damn x64 architecture, and since most IA64 boxes sold are HP-UX or VMS anyway, I understand where they're coming from.

My complaint isn't that I personally love Windows and care that it doesn't run on my own Itanium hardware, but that this is a win for x86/x64. Maybe I'm stupid and obsolete, but I refuse to believe that that architecture is the future or anything close to it...

The following is on a minimal amount of sleep, and may not be entirely coherent.

Honestly, I don't think you need to worry. SPARC and IA64 are both seemingly at death's door, but POWER is going strong, and plenty of new chipmakers (Tilera, for example) are coming into the market. I would not be surprised to see a "RISC Renaissance" in the high end as personal computing becomes increasingly based on thin-client type technologies (like "cloud computing.") All the architectural band-aids in the world can't make x86's disadvantages go away. The really cost-sensitive segments (desktops and laptops, netbooks, etc) are already about as fast as they need to be, and will probably stick with x86 until something better (ARM?) comes along that can run the same software at a reasonable speed. On the other hand, RISC is still the fastest thing around on severs and large-scale workstations, where performance still matters, and I think that will increasingly shift in RISC's favor. x86 just isn't that fast, doesn't comfortably go above about six cores without MCM's, and in general it's I/O and memory bandwidth don't come close to RISC solutions, especially POWER. Nehalem goes a long way toward correcting this, but getting relatively close in performance to the Power6, which is last-gen, really isn't good enough.

I predict RISC workstations will, in fact, come back. I think personal computing processors over the next few years are going to be more architecturally to embedded processors than to workstation/server processors, and that personal computing will always be where Intel and (probably) AMD do the most R&D. This leaves a hole in workstation and server processors that the fast RISC chips have an excellent chance to fill. I don't think that SiCortex was the last attempt at making RISC workstations; I think it was one of the first of the new generation.

Sorry for all the run-on sentences, bizarre transitions, and non-fleshed-out ideas. I hope I get the point across.

Sorry for being vague. I meant something like an IntelliStation POWER or medium-size Prism as opposed to the cheap x86 systems or even things like O2's. The fairly large number of SiCortex PDS-72's sold indicate that there's still a market for things like this, even when it's not legacy technology. (try seeing x86 pack 72 cores of that speed into a machine that only consumes 300W!)

Nice system, I'd be very interested in seeing how it performs. I've been lusting after one of those myself.

The CS7402 is definitely running on proprietary processors, and your chance of getting Linux on it is pretty much zero. On the other hand, if you got a copy of OS2200 you would have one of the more unique hardware/software environments around. Both these systems support mixed Xeon and Unisys processors, but here's the catch: the Xeons can only run Windows, and the Unisys chips can only run OS2200. No mixing and matching; you're basically getting two computers, a Unisys mainframe and a large Xeon server. You can supposedly do some cool virtualization crap with this, but I don't own one so I can't comment in detail.

The Unisys chips are supposed to be obscenely fast at single-threaded business workloads - these systems would definitely be interesting to have.

Not gonna happen, OS/2 is 10+ years old. That would be like HP bringing back Tru64. Also, didn't eComStation buy the rights to OS/2 anyway?

http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-eServer-pSeries ... %26ps%3D63

Also not a bad price, although I wish it was a little more specific on how much RAM was in it. IBM sure knows how to make scary-looking systems.

No, but it's insanely high-margin, as well as being a huge industry in terms of revenue. Something like a third of total server revenue comes from IA64, SPARC, and POWER, despite being only a couple percent of units shipped. Of that, IA64 had a 26% market share of that market in 2008, and it's supposedly grown since due to Sun's implosion. That's serious money, and I don't think Intel wants to just leave it to IBM and Oracle. Windows and RHEL losing IA64 support are probably inconvenient for some people, but really just aren't that big of a deal, since the vast majority of IA64 systems run HP-UX or VMS anyway.

IA64 is going to survive long-term.

Slightly offtopic, but I didn't think this was big enough to start a new thread for. HP is coming out with "Tukwila"-equipped Integrity servers on the 27th. I'm interested to see how having the vastly faster bus improves performance.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/194746/h ... _week.html

I don't know about that. The Montvale Integrity systems were available under $10k, I would figure the Tukwila ones at just a bit more.

And, as it turns out, no new Integrity systems except blades until later this year. I keep wondering to myself if HP is deliberately trying drive everyone to IBM, or if they're just morons.

Hamei, Carly has moved onto greener pastures. No longer content with having had almost killed HP, she's now running for Senate to see if she can do the same thing to the entire country.

I dislike Barbara Boxer intensely, but if Fiorina gets the Republican nomination, I hope Boxer wins.

All of you are heretics!

First is this . A "major server manufacturer" is due to announce a 512-core server on 22 June based on 8 64-core Tilera MIPS processors, which is pretty cool. I'm interested to see their definition of "major" - will this be one of the big players, or someone who's name occasionally gets mentioned in the press? Either way, it's very cool to see new RISC servers announced.

The other interesting article is SGI-related: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sgi-announces-hybrid-computing-platform-to-deliver-a-petaflop-in-a-single-cabinet-2010-06-01?reflink=MW_news_stmp . SGI is apparently back in the MIPS business, and planning to use Tilera processors as accelerators in next-generation Altix systems.

This whole post is horrifying. Especially the part about trading a PDP-11 for a fracking Lisa.