The leading Linux seller is exploring Intel technology that improves the ability of the chipmaker’s Itanium processor to run older software written for Xeon or Pentium chips.
Red Hat Warms to Itanium-booster Plan
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Intel will use a software emulation. All this useless hardware emulation circuitry will be trashed someday… Don’t you remember they delayed Itaznium because of this very 32 bits performance problem? Ah! so ridiculous…
Actually, Intel has been using a most-software emulation all this while and planning to change that by moving some of the x86 32-bit functions to the processor. And they didn’t delay Itanium because of the bad 32-bit performance (otherwise Itanium wouldn’t be released until now).
Intel’s customers can go to AMD’s Opteron for true 32-bit performance without sacrifice. Man, Intel must really be scared.
or Intel’s customers can stay with Intel for 32bit apps and stay with Intel for 64bit apps…..
this is funny if you go to tomshardware.com you can see how the new AMD64 is making a very strong showing with improved performance in the area of 32-bit computing and showing strong in 64-bit. a 1.8GHz Opteron is performing better than a 3.06GHz Xeon in many benches. And people are suppose to buy Itaniums because it offers a whopping 1.5GHz Xeon performance in with 32-bit apps. Im sorry right now if you want 64-bit and 32-bit app support its all about AMD.
why would you need both 32bit and 64bit support?
64/32 bit is less of a problem for RedHat than for Microsoft. Most OSS software is just a recompile away from being 64-bit compatible. The only thing holding RedHat up are a few commercials programs like Oracle, which (thanks to the maturity of 64-bit support in Linux) will be easier to port on the Linux side than on the Windows side. If Itanium moves forward, I think you’re going to see Intel push Linux a little harder than they have previously.
PS> Looking “fondly” at emulation software? Somebody buy the man a thesaurus!
No, people are buying the Itanium 2 because its floating point performance is more than twice that of anything available today.
Number crunching is what these chips were designed for. Not playing games or running 32-bit apps. Nobody is going to even thinking 32-bit or integer, for that matter, if they’re looking at the Itanium.