[Info-vax] Latest Hobbyist license with VSI 8.4-2 problem

[Craig A. Berry]

On 1/18/18 11:21 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> I can see a reason for people keeping a vax today... I can see a reason for
> people keeping an Alpha today... but I have a hard time finding any good
> reason to keep an Itanium machine around once an x86 port becomes available.
> 
> Let's face it, the Itanium was a giant mistake.  I understand how the wide
> word architecture seemed like a good idea at the time, and I am glad that
> someone tried it, but I am also glad that someone was not me.
> 
> Spend the effort not on supporting Itanium but on getting people off of it
> as quickly as possible.

It's not that easy. Lots of us are on Itanium because it's been the only
way to get new hardware for a very long time. I expect the port from
Itanium to x86_64 to be even easier than the port from Alpha to Itanium,
but it's still a port, and there will have to be a project with
resources allocated to do it, and lots of testing.

Then consider all the places that ported to Itanium 10-12 years ago
where the people who did the port have since left or retired. Hopefully
these folks will figure out what they need to do to port to x86_64 and
find the help they need to do it. But it will take some years.

Plus VSI has committed to supporting HPE Integrity servers as long as
HPE continues to make them. Maybe that will stop in 2025, but it
wouldn't surprise me if it gets extended beyond that. Look at the
roadmap: Alpha, Itanium, and x86_64 all have standard support for v9.2
through at least 2024.

Supporting three architectures sounds like a nightmare to me, but it
looks like that's where we will be for the foreseeable future. There
will probably be a lot of x86_64-only features in the next few years,
so, let's hope that helps get people of Itanium.