Intel to ship Montecity - yawn

From http://morewally.com/cs/blogs/wallym/archive/2006/07/08/158.aspx

This week, Intel is set to ship Montecito.  Montecito is the latest version of the Itanium family of processors from Intel.  There have been three major problems with the Itanium family of processors.
  1. Poor support from software companies.  Its a chicken and the egg problem.  The software companies don't want to spend a lot of money on supporting it until the there is sufficient hardware in the marketplace.  There won't be a significant uptake of hardware without software to run on it.
  2. Intel didn't get the white box crowd involved.  Without white box support, the processor won't see widespread usage.
  3. The Itanium doesn't provide very good emulation of the x86 family of processors.
  4. A fourth issue, somewhat related to the previous issues, is that the cost of an Itanium system is currently too much for the  commodity marketplace.
As a result of these issues, the Itanium has never taken off.  I've watched the x64 systems grow up and  take over the commodity space.  Intel is getting ready to ship the Montecito.  Yawn, wake me up when there is something interested.

Wally

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