PC: The future of the Intel Itanium® processor is uncertain

Introduction: The US it website PC World wrote today that Intel's efforts to develop Xeon processors and Microsoft's cessation of support for Itanium have created a lot of uncertainty about the future development of Itanium processors, and have made it possible for rivals such as IBM to take advantage of them. The following is the full text of the article: Make way for Xeon Intel reiterated this week that it would continue to develop an Itanium processor, but it also said it would use the Xeon processor to capture market share.　　However, Itanium and Xeon belong to High-performance server chips. Intel released its new Xeon 7500 processor last week, and Microsoft announced this week that the Windows server operating system will no longer support Itanium processors.　　All this makes the future of Itanium full of uncertainty. The Xeon 7500 processor, also known as Nehalem-ex, is the most powerful processor Intel provides for enterprise servers, and the security and reliability of such products can be comparable to that of Itanium.　　However, the use of Itanium is decreasing, while Intel wants to build a x86-based Xeon processor into an alternative to IBM Power7 and Sun SPARC, with a RISC architecture for the latter two products. Shannon Poulin, Intel Xeon Platform marketing director Sharen Polin, said earlier this week that Intel wanted Nehalem-ex processors to conquer new areas. He said: "We will not be in any way to curb to strong development."　　But Pauline declined to comment on whether the Xeon would replace Itanium.　　However, analysts believe that as users gradually start to use the mainstream x86 environment to install servers, Itanium's share will gradually decline and make way for strong development, although it will take many years.　　Relocation Microsoft said earlier this week that its new operating system, Windows Server 2008 R2, will stop supporting Itanium processors by 2018. "Why make this change," says Dan Reger, senior technology product manager for Windows server Dan Regge. Since the 64-bit x86 architecture has led the development of the processor and server markets, such technologies can meet the scale and reliability needed to deal with the ' mission-critical ' (mission-critical) workload today, so this is a very natural change.　　While Intel's Pauline says Microsoft Windows Server is less than 5% installed on Itanium servers, continuing to support the product does not fit Microsoft's commercial interests. Intel now attempts to reposition Itanium and differentiate it from the x86 processor. Rob Shiveley, a global marketing manager for Intel's mission-critical platform, Rob Hiverley that the main goal of Itanium is to run HP-UX OS systems, as well as "select mainframe markets" based on UNIX and other operating systems. The Xeon processor looks at theMission-critical servers running Windows, Linux, and the Solaris operating system. A spokesman for Intel said the company would still devote resources to developing a new type of itanium® processor.　　Intel launched the development of an Tukwila processor code-named Poulson this year, which will be followed by the development of an Itanium processor code-named Kittson. Implementation commitments analysts say Intel still has many reasons to continue developing an Itanium processor. Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at the US market research firm Insight 64, says Intel has many Nessen Brook users and HP's enterprise server's fault-tolerant integration System is the product's largest user. Intel is committed to HP's long-term development of Itanium.　　HP had had a lot of trouble moving from the Pa-risc architecture to Itanium, so it was unlikely that the company would immediately turn to the x86 architecture. For many Unix and non-UNIX operating systems that are still being used in the Enterprise Server domain, it is also a "dumping ground", says Brook Wood. One of the non-UNIX operating systems named GCOS is still being launched for the server. GE developed the first version of GCOS in 1962 and later renamed it Gecos.　　French mainframe manufacturer Groupe Bull is still selling mainframe servers using GCOS8. Dean McCarron, chief analyst at Mercury Research, a US marketing firm, believes Intel also needs to comply with a long-term agreement with the Dien Mccarren server manufacturer. "Intel is unlikely to stop the development of Itanium in the next few years," he said. "Move to x86." But McCullen also believes that, in some ways, companies have had to abandon some of the more expensive specialised processors and opt for cheaper x86 products.　　In the longer term, he predicts, Intel and HP will come to some sort of agreement to eventually turn to x86 servers. According to McCullen, Intel provides a common hardware design, such as memory and chipset, that allows system vendors to support both Nehalem-ex and Itanium in a cheaper way.　　Nehalem-ex also uses the RAS features of Itanium as well as the MCA Recovery error correction function to reduce data corruption and ensure reliable system performance. "Itanium has opened a door for x86, allowing Intel to compete directly with the RISC architecture vendors in this market," McCullen said. But market research firm J. Jack Gold, chief analyst at Gold Associates, believes the cost savings of these measures will be offset by the cost of importing software into the x86 system. "Hardware transfer is easier, and software imports are difficult," he said. Gold believes that converting the previous code into a code that supports the x86 architecture requiresIt takes time, and companies that rely heavily on older software may not want to make that change.　　This shift also depends on the design and process of the software. In the long run, analysts say, Intel needs to facilitate transcoding, but in the short term it needs to ensure that the users are not taken away by IBM. IBM may use the uncertainty of Itanium to entice users to use the company's latest Power7 system, which is faster and more scalable than Itanium. (Ding Macro)