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Athlon 64: How AMD turned the tables on Intel

(dfarq.homeip.net)
331 points giuliomagnifico | 6 comments | 25 Sep 25 18:09 UTC | HN request time: 1.092s | source | bottom
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bigstrat2003 ◴[25 Sep 25 19:20 UTC] No.45377613[source]▶
I remember at the time thinking it was really silly for Intel to release a 64-bit processor that broke compatibility, and was very glad AMD kept it. Years later I learned about kernel writing, and I now get why Intel tried to break with the old - the compatibility hacks piled up on x86 are truly awful. But ultimately, customers don't care about that, they just want their stuff to run.
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wvenable ◴[25 Sep 25 21:23 UTC] No.45379301[source]▶
Intel might have been successful with the transition if they didn't decide to go with such radically different and real-world untested architecture for Itanium.
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pixl97 ◴[25 Sep 25 21:37 UTC] No.45379461[source]▶
Well that and Itanium was eyewateringly expensive and standard PC was much cheaper for similar or faster speeds.
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Tsiklon ◴[25 Sep 25 22:48 UTC] No.45380251[source]▶
I think Itanium was a remarkable success in some other ways. Intel utterly destroyed the workstation market with it. HP-UX, IRIX, AIX, Solaris.

Itanium sounded the deathknell for all of them.

The only Unix to survive with any market share is MacOS, (arguably because of its lateness to the party) and it has only relatively recently went back to a more bespoke architecture

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seabrookmx ◴[25 Sep 25 23:02 UTC] No.45380406[source]▶
HP-UX was one of the most popular operating systems to run on Itanium though?
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1. icedchai ◴[25 Sep 25 23:05 UTC] No.45380436[source]▶
HP was also one of the few companies to actually sell Itanium systems! They were also the last to stop selling them. They ported both OpenVMS and HP-UX to Itanium.
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2. tyingq ◴[25 Sep 25 23:19 UTC] No.45380569[source]▶
Well, largely because they made it difficult for customers to stay on PA-RISC, then later, because their competitors were dying off...and if you were in the market for stodgy RISC/Unix there weren't many other choices.
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3. sillywalk ◴[26 Sep 25 04:10 UTC] No.45382543[source]▶
HP also ported NonStop to Itanium.
4. icedchai ◴[26 Sep 25 13:27 UTC] No.45386277[source]▶
As for RISC/Unix, in the enterprise, IBM's POWER/AIX is still around. I know some die hard IBM shops still using it.

I guess Oracle / Sun sparc is also still hanging on. I haven't seen a Sun shop since the early 2000's...

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5. kjs3 ◴[26 Sep 25 17:09 UTC] No.45388756{3}[source]▶
There's still a lot of AIX around and the LoB is seeing revenue growth. You just don't hear about it on HN because it's mostly doing mundane, mission critical stuff buried in large orgs.

I still run into a number of Solaris/SPARC shops, but even the most die hard of them are actively looking for the off-ramp. The writing is on that wall.

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6. icedchai ◴[26 Sep 25 17:21 UTC] No.45388855{4}[source]▶
I believe it! For a few years, I worked on fairly large system deployed to an AIX environment. The hardware and software were both rock solid. While I haven't used it, the performance of the newer POWER stuff looks incredible.