| The new instructions are called IA-32e (e for extended). It will be hard to market it as true 64-bit with that name.
It is probably heresy inside the Intel Corporation to say out loud what everyone knows to be true: the Itanium is, umm, failing to meet expectations. Thanks to some clever engineering from AMD, the market now has an alternate path to 64-bit computing, and there is very little doubt that AMD will clean Intel's clock in the server market if Intel does not face reality. The IA-64 appears to be another iAPX-432, the amazing waaaaay-ahead-of-its time chip that Intel once offered up as the 32-bit successor to the 16-bit x86 line... which at that time was still at the 286. There are plenty of people at Intel who remember those days, so they already know how this movie ends. But Intel is stuck. Like any big company, it has a whole division that has its hopes and dreams tied up in the IA-64. It's their baby, and it's wonderful, and it must be the sales department's fault that things are not unfolding according to plan. Plus they have the "50 OEMs" (are any besides HP of significant size? I don't know). These are loyal customers who stuck their necks out and committed to IA-64 back when no one else would. These are your best friends. So even though everybody in the building knows that the right answer is to drop Itanium like a hot rock and get out there quickly with an answer to AMD's Opteron, they can't bring themselves to really do it. They have to cripple the device, and position it as some limited "mid-way point" on the way to ItaniumLand... which absolutely no one believes. In spite of which, they all parrot this nonsense to the public and to each other, and everyone pretends to believe it's true. This is how everybody in the minicomputer business, except for Hewlett-Packard, died. It's how all the mainframers except IBM died. It's how Kodak is going to kill itself. Even though everybody in the place understands the threat, and what the right thing to do is, they can't bring themselves to do it. Their whole bureaucarcy will deny reality for as long as it can, so it can continue doing what it has been doing. There is some contingent at Intel -- probably a sizable one -- that can tell you one hell of a story about why the IA-64 must inevitably take over the world. It just hasn't happened yet, but it will. It must. Yeah, and there's a guy at Kodak who can tell you just as good a story about why there will always be a market for silver halide film. Digital Equipment's Ken Olsen is famous for having said, "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home". It's all about people fooling themselves; denying reality so that they can keep on doing what they have been doing. It takes spectacularly good management to steer a large company through one of these episodes. It doesn't look like Intel has the right guy. What they are doing here is going to give AMD another year or so to get design wins and to move their technology even further ahead. In one of the other articles about this, one of the reporters inquires as to whether this new Intel chip is "AMD compatible." If you're Intel, and you hear that, you should run out of the building, fly back to the office immediately, and set off the fire alarm when you get there. |
This is an excellent illustration of how big companies paralyze themselves in the name of internal harmony and ego-protection, and end up toppling over as a result.