Intel
Formally, Intel’s Itanium chips and their IA-64 structure died back in 2021, when the corporate shipped its final processors. However failed expertise typically dies 1,000,000 little deaths. To call only a few: Itanium additionally died in 2013, when Intel successfully decided to stop improving it; in 2017, when the final new Itanium CPUs shipped; in 2020, when the final Itanium-compatible model of Home windows Server stopped getting updates; and in 2003, when AMD introduced a 64-bit processor lineup that did not break compatibility with current 32-bit x86 working programs and functions.
Itanium is dying one other loss of life within the subsequent model of the Linux kernel. According to Phoronix, all code associated to Itanium help is being faraway from the kernel within the upcoming 6.7 launch after a number of months of deliberation. Linus Torvalds removed some 65,219 lines of Itanium-supporting code in a commit earlier this week, giving the structure a “well-earned retirement as deliberate.”
The primary Itanium processors had been launched in mid-2001, the results of years of collaboration between Intel and HP. The preliminary designs had been made for servers, the place their parallelized design would (theoretically) be capable of pace issues up by executing a number of directions concurrently. From there, the instruction set would ultimately migrate into lower-end servers after which to shopper PCs.
However Itanium suffered from its gradual execution of 32-bit x86 code, making for a disruptive transition. When AMD stepped ahead with a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set that would tackle extra RAM and execute current code properly, it proved so alluring to server and PC makers that Intel needed to undertake and help AMD’s x86 extensions as a substitute.
The elimination of IA-64 help from Linux kernel 6.7 does not absolutely finish Itanium help in Linux. The just-released kernel model 6.6 is a long-term help (LTS) launch, that means that it needs to be maintained and supported for a few years to return. This kernel model nonetheless helps Itanium. It does not tackle one of many issues that led to the elimination of Itanium help within the first place, although—the truth that it is not being extensively examined or maintained. Itanium help in an earlier model of the Linux kernel was broken for several weeks in early 2021 earlier than any person seen.
On the {hardware} facet, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will proceed to help its final Itanium-based servers until 2025.
Itanium is not the one Intel processor going through the chopping block in Linux. Not too long ago, Torvalds and different kernel maintainers discussed eradicating help for Intel’s 80486 processors, first launched in 1989. Thus far, that does not seem to have occurred.