How Intel's Supercomputer Almost Used HP Chips
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 22nd Sep 2009 21:20 UTC
Intel More than a decade ago, Intel ran into an issue trying to deliver what was to be the world's top-ranked supercomputer: it looked possible that its new Pentium Pro processors at the heart of the system might not arrive in time. As a result, the chipmaker made an unusual move by paying Hewlett-Packard $100,000 to evaluate building the system using its PA-RISC processors in the machine, said Paul Prince, now Dell's chief technology officer for enterprise products but then Intel's system architect for the supercomputer. Called ASCI Red and housed at Sandia National Laboratories, it was designed to be the first supercomputer to cross the threshold of a trillion math calculations per second.
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RE: Comment by kaiwai
by neticspace on Wed 23rd Sep 2009 02:34 UTC in reply to "Comment by kaiwai"
neticspace
Member since:
2009-06-09

Given what a lemon Itanium is; the original aim was for it to become a general purpose processor to replace Xeon so that it could compete with the UNIX world, I wonder whether PA-RISC would have been a better architecture to go for instead of Itanium.

I also wonder what it would have been like if Intel sprinkled PA-RISC with its power saving magic and what it would be like in a laptop ;)


Just a simple question. What is the exact relationship between Itanium and PA-RISC?

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