HP/Intel IA64 (Was Re: I hate to ask, but.... (Alpha-PC))

[Chip Richards]

On Sat, Jul 04, 1998 at 04:34:33PM -0700, Benjamin D Chambers wrote:

   On Sat, 04 Jul 1998 10:57:37 -0700 Bruce Johnson wrote:
   >Then again, the Merced's not going to run X86 binaries, either.
   
   Considering how long I've heard rumors of Intel's _finally_ breaking x86
   compatability (close to 3 years now) I wouldn't be surprised if this
   attempt is also just a rumor.

Rumor indeed.  Benjamin, I'm with you.  Bruce's is a very interesting bit of
information, one that runs counter to everything I've heard about Merced (now
known, BTW, by the more formal name of "IA64") for the past two or three
years.  At the risk of prolonging the off-topic CPU thread even further, I'd
like to interject.  (And it can be argued that high-performance computing
hardware is of great interest to the ray tracing community, so I've let the
thread continue this far on that basis. <g>)

I work at what once was a heavy HP shop.  Our HP reps began talking about the
IA64 project at least two years ago, and possibly more--I've forgotten the
exact date when they first mentioned it.  But their description, while a bit
optimistic at first, is in agreement with everything else I've heard about
IA64 both from other HP sources and from sources within the Intel user
community.  HP has already begun handing out IA64 transition kits--I have one
on my desk at this moment.

That description is that IA64 will be a "dual mode" chip.  It will recognize
the instruction sets of both the x86 family of CPUs and the HP PA-RISC family
of CPUs.  Binary compatibility with existing x86 *and* PA-RISC binaries has
been the one constant in every description of the IA64 that I've ever heard.
It is this multiple personality aspect of the new architecture that has caused
it to take so long to create.  Whether the IA64 will implement new
instructions also is less certain, but, well, probably.  It *will* have a
64-bit mode of some sort.

Bruce, I'd be very interested to know where you got this singular bit of
information that you've passed along here.

Bruce said:

   >All will require recompiles from the ground up ...

Now *this* I have heard, although not as a requirement but as a strong,
competitive inducement.  Existing binaries will run out of the box (so they
say) but to get the performance advantage that the IA64 offers, a recompile
(and possibly a rewrite) will be necessary.  One thing I can say with fair
certainty is that the day the IA64 is released, both NT and HP-UX *will* run
on it.  Run well, I cannot say, but run they will.  Oh, and there's pretty
solid information coming out of Intel that Linux will run on it also, in
64-bit mode. <g> (Linux, unlike NT, is running on the Alpha in 64-bit mode
*today*.)

-- 
Chip