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0 pointsAdamN17h ago0 comments

They were trying to compete with Sun and IBM in the server space (SPARC and Power) and thought that they needed a totally pro architecture (which Itanium was). The baggage of 32-bit x86 would have just slowed it all down. However having an x86-64 would have confused customers in the middle.

Think back then it was all about massive databases - that was where the big money was and x86 wasn't really setup for the top end load patterns of databases (or OLAP data lakes).

0 comments

NetMageSCW14h ago

Steve Jobs quote seems appropriate and yet still hard for companies to learn: "If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will"

twoodfin11h ago

In the end, Intel did cannibalize themselves. It wasn’t too long after the Itanium launch that Intel was publicly presenting a roadmap that had Xeons as the appealing mass-market server product.

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0 pointsAdamN17h ago0 comments

Think back then it was all about massive databases - that was where the big money was and x86 wasn't really setup for the top end load patterns of databases (or OLAP data lakes).

0 comments

NetMageSCW14h ago

Steve Jobs quote seems appropriate and yet still hard for companies to learn: "If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will"

twoodfin11h ago

In the end, Intel did cannibalize themselves. It wasn’t too long after the Itanium launch that Intel was publicly presenting a roadmap that had Xeons as the appealing mass-market server product.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse