topic Re: Itanium chip in Integrity Servers

Itanium chip

Lacrosse — Mon, 10 Feb 2003 22:14:55 GMT

Does anyone know how far out on the road map the 7410 or 8400 will support the Itanium chip

Re: Itanium chip

Brian M Rawlings — Tue, 11 Feb 2003 00:39:31 GMT

This is partly on-topic, all I could find in the clear (non-proprietary). Check out:

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/07may02b.htm

A related item, again not quite a bullseye, is:

http://www.midrangeserver.com/mid/mid012203-story01.html

I'll keep looking. I have some NDA stuff, but I can't share it.

HP CAN, if they choose to. HEY, Vince? Eugeny? Yo! (We'll see what they say...)

Regards, --bmr

Re: Itanium chip

Brian M Rawlings — Tue, 11 Feb 2003 00:50:54 GMT

Closer (I think... if the darned picture would show up, I'd know if it's relevant)

http://www.hp.com/products1/itanium/why/path/index.html

The actual 'roadmap' wouldn't display in my browser. Hopefully it will work OK for you, or by the time you try it. Still not specific to RP7410 or RP8400.

If HP has words of wisdom for us on this, hopefully they will also mention the strategy and timeframes for Itanium in the RP54xx series, which only says "supports future upgrade to Itanium"... as in, "only the frame will remain" (with the asset tag on it, which is a "good thing").

Later... --bmr

Re: Itanium chip

John Collier — Tue, 11 Feb 2003 17:33:47 GMT

Brian,

Don't feel lonesome. The graphic didn't show up for me either.

I don't have much to offer in the way of an answer to this, but the topic does interest me since this company recently decided to get at least 4 different boxes useing this new 'super-chip'.

Re: Itanium chip

Brian M Rawlings — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 00:15:55 GMT

For what it's worth, speculation I've heard is that Itanium-II chips will be available in the "cell-based" 9000 servers (Superdome, RP7410, RP8400) sometime this year, Q3/Q4. 'Orca' (Superdome with Itanium) is supposed to be available first. A few months later, Itanium processors will be available in the two rackmount units. There will be lots of buzz before it happens, and we'll know more with greater assurance of truth as the release dates approach.

For this year, it is not expected that the Itanium versions will outperform the PA-RISC versions. Additional MHz/GHz versions of both will happen, at typical intervals (just as we've seen in the past), with new designs of the PA-RISC processors expected as well. One may be a "dual CPU on a chip", which will keep the PA-RISC a viable processor family for a couple of years, as all the units out there will see the ability to run 2x the number of CPUs that they now can support.

HP's stated strategy for a couple of years has been to "overlap" Itanium and PA-RISC offerings in the same box, allowing customers to gradually move to Itanium as it makes sense for them to do so. Eventually (2-3 more years), when Itanium has become the clear performance champ (and presumably is stable and has broad ISV/App support), no new PA-RISC chips will be designed, and those in production will taper off of their own accord.

Re: Itanium chip

John Collier — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 16:13:30 GMT

Brian,

Along the lines of the 'for what it's worth' line of thought...

I know that the I-II's are available for order as we speak in the rack-mount versions of the small server/workstation variety. I guess, rereading my previous entry, that I didn't really clarify what our company had just ordered. What they finally convinced the guy with the purse strings to do was to put 4 of the units (don???t have the model number right here for reference) on order that could support up to 2 processors. My understanding is that this is the low-end configuration for such a box.

The biggest concern that I have is that this was all done without HP ever coughing up a test box for a proof-of-concept type of environment. I don???t like having to go this route. Makes me wonder what it is that they are trying to hide.

Oh well. Looks like we will find out soon enough, huh?

If anybody has any more solid information on the future of this family of processors, I would be very interested???

Re: Itanium chip

Brian M Rawlings — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 22:35:35 GMT

John: the Itanium server line is made up of the RX2600 (1/2 CPU, 2U rackable) and RX5670 (1/4 CPU, 7U rackable) servers. I presume you have the RX2600s.

Unfortunatly, these first 9000-class Itanium units appear to actually be HP's intro/test boxes. Not that they don't work, they do, but... HP-UX 11.22 (or whatever they're calling it these days) is required to run on them, and there aren't a lot of apps qualified on them.

I believe that they are intended to be used for ISVs, app vendors, and "roll-your-own" app programmers to port stuff onto Itanium. Last I heard, HP wasn't supporting them for production work, but that was last year. They've been edging toward full-boat support, patching the OS and drivers and so forth, and generally getting these things ready for prime time.

It is actually very good that you have them, although I expect you to hit some annoyance along the way. You will be up and working on Itanium long before most of the rest of us get to play.

I know it's a mixed blessing, but it should be fun (ouch) fun (ouch) [repeat as necessary].

Best Regards, and good luck!! --bmr