fwiw from cnbc and wsj:
msnbc.com
Intel gambles it can move beyond
the PC with new microprocessor
Chip giant places huge bet on starting from scratch
By David P. Hamilton
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 29 — Intel Corp. has long dominated the world of microprocessors, using its control of the engine of personal computers to build one of the most lucrative franchises in corporate history. Its chips supply the brains for more than half a billion PCs world-wide. But a decade ago, Intel saw that it was nearing a crossroads.
ITS FINGERNAIL-SIZE CHIPS were based on an aging design, one that would require major revision in order to fulfill Intel’s dream of extending its reach beyond PCs to high-end computer servers that power corporate networks and the Internet.
Like a homeowner torn between renovating an old house and building a new one, Intel realized it could spiff up the existing microprocessor line, known as the x86, with a technical facelift, or it could start on a whole new design. After heated internal discussions, Intel decided to plunge into the unknown, forging an ambitious partnership with Hewlett-Packard Co. to design an all-new chip.
Tuesday, Intel will unveil the Itanium, the first of a series of processors it hopes will extend its dominance to the entire computing universe and cement its position for decades. The stakes for Intel are high. With prices of its PC processors falling steadily, it badly needs to move to higher ground. The fate of Itanium could determine whether the company’s dominance slips as the PC wanes in importance — or whether Intel helps shoulder aside big servers from Sun Microsystems Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., the way Intel-based PCs once overran rivals such as Apple Computer Inc.
OPERATION MERCED
Developing Itanium, previously known by the code name Merced, has been an intense and unpredictable effort that sometimes teetered on the brink of disaster. Time and again, a project team of as many as 500 circuit engineers, chip architects and software wizards found it had underestimated the difficulty of its task, more than once sinking into a quagmire of complexity with no obvious way out.
Like carpenters forced to build new hammers and saws as they went along, Intel’s engineers designed and tested new software tools at the same time that they were sketching out parts of the tiny chip. The team broke into separate groups, each working on one piece without knowing just how they would fit together.
“Everything was crazy,” says John Crawford, the chip’s chief architect. “We were taking risks everywhere. Everything was new. When you do that, you’re going to stumble.”
As a result of the many setbacks, the first Itanium chip is two years late, an eternity in the world of technology. What would have been a speedy processor if introduced on time in 1999 now will run only half as fast as Intel’s next version of the Pentium 4, which still uses the x86 architecture.
For this first Itanium, expectations are low. Many in the industry think it will be used mainly for testing, with corporate customers waiting for a second-generation chip code-named McKinley that is due out next year. Microsoft Corp. has only just completed a limited edition of its Windows operating system tailored for Itanium and doesn’t plan to release a final version until the end of the year. Since the Itanium is aimed at servers and workstations, Intel will continue making Pentium and Celeron chips for PCs.
“This will end up being one of the world’s worst investments, I’m afraid,” predicts David House, a former Intel official who is now chief executive of Allegro Networks, a network-equipment start-up. Mr. House, Intel’s chief of corporate strategy in the early 1990s, worries that Intel will never get back the $1 billion to $2 billion that analysts estimate Itanium has cost so far. Mr. House, who approved the project at the time despite his own reservations, says the scale of the Merced project “scared the everloving bejesus out of me.” Intel says that his doomsaying is nonsense and that the Itanium family will make it plenty of money.
The Itanium story began in the early 1990s as Intel’s designers started to chafe at limitations of the x86 design. The most serious: It processes data in chunks of 32 bits — each a one or a zero. For technical reasons, that limits the memory of a PC or server to four gigabytes.
The limit is still distant for today’s PCs, which average 128 megabytes of memory. Servers, however, use far more memory because they do so much heavy lifting, from storing Web pages to running giant company databases. Memory requirements also double every 18 months or so, making the memory limit a distinct threat to Intel’s high-end computing ambitions.
The solution: Intel needed to develop a new processor architecture, or underlying design, that could handle data in chunks of 64 bits. That would make possible memory sizes four billion times as large as with the x86.
A new architecture is a complex ecosystem of devices and programs, so creating a new one involves far more than just designing a single chip. Engineers need to build, generally from scratch, software to help programs run better on the new processor, sets of “assistant” chips for the processor, and batteries of testing and verification programs. Little wonder that a group of Intel engineers argued for simply tweaking the x86 architecture to handle 64-bit data.
By the early 1990s, however, new processors such as Digital Equipment Corp.’s Alpha chip were already showing greatly improved performance with new designs. Mr. Crawford led a faction that said Intel had to push forward with a new architecture or risk trailing competitors “from day one.” Technical arguments raged until his group eventually convinced Albert Yu, then general manager for microprocessors, that an aggressive approach was best.
Across Silicon Valley, Hewlett-Packard also had some decisions to make. A power in high-end computing, H-P had long built its own microprocessors but reserved them for its own workstations and servers. Recently, engineers in its corporate labs had designed an advanced processor architecture called PA-WideWord, which promised blazing spee... |
