I didn't know these things, I don't think they are part of the meme-lore about Itanium:
- The problems with the fast load misses and compiler support
- I didn't understand the implications of a completely visible register file
- The trouble with "hard coding" three execution units. Very bad if you can't recompile your code and/or bytecde to a new binary when you get a new CPU.
Your last point about coding your way out of the ecosystem, I wonder if that might have been a reason for why Intel didn't go all-in to make Itanium the Java machine...
These were (intended for) Unix machines, not general purpose PCs… the assumption was that everyone was compiling anything that went on the system anyways, or were buying licenses for a specific hardware box. So at least it wasn’t considered to be a problem at the time.
One other unmet hope was that improvements in compiler technology would give a peer boost, they had up to 10x over the life of the program, which seemed wishful to me at the time (a lowly validation engine just out of college) but if it had worked out, theoretically your old programs would have gotten faster over time just by recompiling, which would have been cool…
I didn't know these things, I don't think they are part of the meme-lore about Itanium:
- The problems with the fast load misses and compiler support
- I didn't understand the implications of a completely visible register file
- The trouble with "hard coding" three execution units. Very bad if you can't recompile your code and/or bytecde to a new binary when you get a new CPU.
Your last point about coding your way out of the ecosystem, I wonder if that might have been a reason for why Intel didn't go all-in to make Itanium the Java machine...