[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[John Wallace]

On Aug 3, 10:14 pm, Keith Parris <keithparris_deletet... at yahoo.com>
wrote:
> On 8/2/2012 9:19 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
>
> > I realise you are the messenger from HP. So I do not intend to shoot
> > the messenger here.
>
> And I hope you don't intend to do any shooting elsewhere, either.
>
> > The wording put out never mentioned that IA64 is to be developped until
> > 2022. It mentions that Intel is to make available chips until 2022. In
> > other words, Intel will keep surplus IA64 chips until 2022.  This means
> > available spares for support beyond end of sale. It doesn't mean
> > continued development until 2022.
>
> I'm not privy to the actual wording of the agreement. I picked up the
> word "develop" from the title of the Inquirer article, which said "HP
> can force Intel to develop Itanium until at least 2022", which I took at
> face value in the absence of any evidence to the contrary.
>
> > (Note that HP did something similar with Alphas, with some "special"
> > customers able to buy Alphas after the end of sales deadline).
>
> Actually, HP Financial Services will happily sell you a refurbished
> Alphaserver even today, 5 years after the last-sale date for Alpha
> systems. I'm working with a customer who earlier this year purchased two
> 32-CPU GS-1280 systems through HPFS. So you, too, can be a "special"
> customer -- if you can write that sort of check. :-)
>
> > However, it is not clear how much software support and upgrades will be
> > done to the IA64 operating systems. Once the last VMS patch is out to
> > support the alst Kittson+ based model, will VMS patches continue to be
> > produced ?  Will TCPIP Services continue to have new releases to support
> > whatever protocol tweaks are made on the internet ?
>
> I think we can safely use Alpha as a precedent. Patches for Alpha still
> continue today, 5 years after last-sale date, and plans are to continue
> that for some time to come (as detailed athttp://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/openvms_supportchart.html).
>
> > the roadmap has been shrunken to just a couple
> > of . releases to support Poulson and Kittson.
>
> I can't remember a time when the VMS Roadmap had more than 1 or 2
> releases in it at a time, plus a placeholder for "future" releases. So
> that hasn't changed.
>
> > People understand that IA64 failed to garner market traction to become
> > mainstream and failed to live up to performance expectations.
>
> Poulson at 2.53 Ghz may help in that area.
>
> > People see that HP has put it on life support to extend its lifetime.
>
> Poulson and Kittson are more than life support. Read David Kanter atwww.realworldtech.com/poulson/and Intel's Poulson manual athttp://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/manuals/i...
> and you'll see that Intel put a lot of engineering effort into Poulson.
> It is likely that Kittson and Kittson+ will have just as impressive a
> level of engineering work as Poulson.
>
> > By basically
> > lying to customers about the real plans for IA64, HP is destroying its
> > enterprise vendor image
>
> Intel came to HP in 2007 saying it couldn't continue with the status
> quo, and HP and Intel came to a satisfactory arrangement that made both
> of them happy, kept Itanium profitable, and allowed it to move forward
> through at least 2022. I don't see that as HP lying -- more like HP
> detecting a potentially-serious problem behind the scenes and fixing it
> before it could adversely affect the customers.

Thanks, I'll have a proper read of the Kanter article when I get time,
especially the bits on "reliability" and "scalability"; words which we
have heard in this context so many times in the past, typically with
little real substance. So on those subjects I'll particularly be
looking for features in IA64 which do not have equivalents in AMD64.

Meanwhile may I respectfully point out a couple of things: (1) the
modern Inquirer can't really be regarded as a reliable source for
"evidence", hopefully there is a more direct source you can quote (2)
what's really different between Itanium's commercial situation today
and Alpha's commercial situation before Alpha was declared EOL?

Both are/were small market-share chips in big markets overall, with
(Alpha's demonstrable and Itanium's alleged) performance advantage
largely outweighed by other disadvantages. Obviously Intel have got
much deeper pockets than DEC had back then, and therefore if they wish
they could keep IA64 alive, but who is actually benefiting by keeping
IA64 alive? IA64-committed customers (ie VMS users) obviously benefit
though what price do they pay for being IA64-dependent rather than
AMD64-dependent? Do Intel as a company benefit overall by keeping IA64
alive? Do HP as a company benefit overall, and in particular do they
benefit more than they would if the software from their "business
critical" stovepipe wasn't IA64-only?

Or are the people who benefit most actually just a few executives who
have made bad decisions in the past and don't want to admit in public
that mistakes happen and predictions aren't always right?