>From:    Gavin Scott <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Out with RISC

>If Itanium becomes simply a PA-RISC replacement and not a commodity
>processor, then its future doesn't really look much better than that of
>PA-RISC itself.  If the processors were switched (new PA-RISC replacing old
>Itanium) then I don't think things would look much different.
>
>Unfortunately pretty much all the software for "commodity" systems in the
>world is based around the old x86 architecture.
.........
>Besides needing to improve on the power/speed/price,
.........
>I *like* Itanium.  It's the sort of exotic, baroque, complex, HP-style
>design that people like me love to play with,

I have not had much reason to look at chip technology since my
days in computer architechture class in the days of the CISC
vs. RISC. debate. I picked up a few articles on the IA-64 chip
design and it looks very good. Sort of the best of everything.

I don't think Intel plans to make it a commodity on the scale
of the x86. It was also noted that Intel will continue with the
x86/IA-32 chips and as not to eat into that market will keep
the price of the Itanium high as not to compete with IA-32
chips. The problem I have with this is that also means that
it will have less of a price/performance value when compared
to RISC chips on SUN or IBM, etc. Even if it is cheaper it
won't be as cheap as it could be compared to the competition.

Maybe some marketer will come up with the bright idea of selling
all IA-64 chips, but just deliberately crippling some? And when
that fails they can blame the business "environment" rather than
admitting its a really dumb idea to sell deliberately crippled
hardware.

Jerry Finn
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