Intel and Microsoft on Tuesday released software designed to improve the performance of Windows applications designed for 32-bit processors when they are running on Intel’s 64-bit Itanium 2 processors. Download it here.
Microsoft Boosts 32-Bit Performance on 64-bit Systems
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Eugenia Loli
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I remember Intel was promising some clever tricks for making itanium2 run x86 apps better(ie to compete with Sledgehammer). Is this it?
I do believe that along with the software that they finally bent to the pressue and are planning a 64/32 CPU like AMD’s. Don’t quote me on that
but I could swear I read it someplace.
It’s the Yawmill (sp?) CPU.
I can’t wait for the benchmarks from the usual suspects.
You have an a herf link in this story.
I don’t expect them to be phenomenal, really. Itanium is a dog while executing 32 bit code. Even if the performance doubles, it’s still ridicolously slow – you get a PIII 450 MHz instead of a PII 300 MHz. Big deal. For a best that costs over $2000 and dissipates well in excess of 100W of power, it’s lafffable.
In fact, if I was intel, I’d keep a low profile on the issue, instead of flaunting this performance increase, which will inevitably attract a lot of hardware sites and benchmarks, which will exhibit the embarrassing truth. And I can’t wait for the fun to begin :o))))))
I don’t expect them to be phenomenal, really. Itanium is a dog while executing 32 bit code. Even if the performance doubles, it’s still ridicolously slow – you get a PIII 450 MHz instead of a PII 300 MHz. Big deal. For a best that costs over $2000 and dissipates well in excess of 100W of power, it’s lafffable.
In fact, if I was intel, I’d keep a low profile on the issue, instead of flaunting this performance increase, which will inevitably attract a lot of hardware sites and benchmarks, which will exhibit the embarrassing truth. And I can’t wait for the fun to begin :o))))))
Whats even funny, there are no development tools to run natively on Windows XP Itanium Ed. So you end up purchasing hardware with an operating system with next to no software and no development tools. Great.
As for the price, WOW WEE! dollar for dollar, Opteron is cheaper and as for those who assert that Opteron doesn’t scale beyond 8 CPU’s, who cares? the sweet spot for volume sales is now moving to 2/4/8 way, anything above that are ultra niche and sales only number in the thousands.
I wonder if NT’s VMS roots helped any in improving performance on Intel’s 32\64-bit processors?
I don’t expect them to be phenomenal, really. Itanium is a dog while executing 32 bit code. Even if the performance doubles, it’s still ridicolously slow – you get a PIII 450 MHz instead of a PII 300 MHz. Big deal. For a best that costs over $2000 and dissipates well in excess of 100W of power, it’s lafffable.
And how fast does your Opteron run EPIC code? Does not? Right, well how fast does your favourite PowerPC run x86 code? Ouh, even slower than Itanium?
Have you ever considered EPIC and x86 aren’t compatible and are different architechtures? In your world, are you as well comparing XScale to x86? Or a motorcycle to an aeroplane?
Actually it’s a nice feature, if you can run x86-code on an EPIC platform, that isn’t what it’s meant for, it’s something extra.
And we’re not actually talking about 32bit performance here, but instead, the performance of x86-emulation. As you hopefully know, there’s other 32-bit architechtures also, and your favourite Opteron can’t run them at all, nor any other x86-processor.
– Yak
The Opteron doesn’t need to run EPIC code. On the other hand, the Itanium *NEEDS* to run x86 code to survive. Big difference there. How many apps are there that are compiled for EPIC (aka IA-64)? How many apps are compiled for x86?
At this point in time, given the x86 performance of the Itanium 2, add the fact that there aren’t many Itanium 2 compiled software, hte Itanium 2 suddenly doesn’t look like a good deal.