[Info-vax] HP Users Hope Whitman Can Persuade Oracle to Change Itanium Decision

[MG]

On 1-10-2011 19:36, JF Mezei wrote:
> Considering that the 8086 shares the same memory subsystem as IA64, does
> IA64 have any advantage over the 8086 ?
>
> Just because HP has decided to not build "mainframe" class 8086s does
> not mean that the current chips are not able to scale to that size. This
> could be a business decision as opposed to a technical one.

The SGI, let alone under its current ownership (with a very favourable
attitude towards x86/-64, to say the least), never made that "business
decision".  Yet, their IA-64 "Altix" line still scales way beyond the
x86/-64 systems that they're selling at the moment.  So, how do you
explain that?

Let's compare SGI's current NUMAlink-based server annex supercomputer
offerings:

     - SGI Altix 4700 (Itanium, i.e. 9000)
     Capable of scaling up to a maximum of 512 processor sockets
     and 128 terabytes(!) of memory.

     - SGI Altix UV (Xeon, i.e. E7)
     Capable of scaling up to a maximum of 256 processor sockets
     and 16 terabytes of memory.


Lastly, why are you so concerned?  Didn't you say you stopped using VMS
and see no point in using it?

  - MG