[Info-vax] Poulson info from Dave Cantor

[JF Mezei]

Michael Kraemer wrote:

> I still wonder who was the idiot who talked HP
> into the notion that programs are infinitely parallelizable
> and it would only need an ultra-smart compiler to do that.
> And I wonder even more who was the idiot at HP
> who bought that idea. Belluzzo?
> 


The way I remember it, the argument was made that it was much faster and
cheaper to put the smarts in software (the compilers) instead of
hardware (the chip) and that EPIC would be able to grow at a faster pace
and never be caught up by competitors.

Recall how the graphs changed on June 25 2001 when the IA64 suddently
had performance increase at a faster pace than all other platforms,
including Alpha.


If IA64 had come out early, and was able to produce new iterations
faster than other chips, this bet would have paid off. But as it turns
out, IA64 is slower to develop and is lagging the industry. While today,
one could presume it is due to reduced development budgets, in the early
days, Intel would have put a lot of money to get this going. Remember
that initially, this was not only for HP, but also to replace the 8086
that was predicted to hit a brick wall "soon" so initially, Intel would
have had big budgets for it.

Perhaps after the 8086 showed its ability to jump over the brick wall,
Intel lost interest since IA64 would no longer replace the 8086 as
industry standard.