Oracle will disc.. Itanium

[Volker Simonis]

Just for clarification (and in response to your last messages on the
"OpenJDK for Virtualization"-thread):

- OpenJDK doesn't currently support Itanium in any way (and it would
be not trivial to add Itanium support from scratch)

- IcedTea (http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/Main_Page) once build and
run on Itanium, but there's evidence that that's not the case anymore:
see http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=345433. Notice that this
was an Interpreter only version based on Gary Bensons Zero-port of the
the OpenJDK. As this project was sponsored by RedHad and RedHad
dropped Itanium support you probably don't have to be a visionary to
predict its future.

- JRockit had an Itanium version until 1.5, but as JRockit was
acquired by Oracle, and Oracle dropped Itanium support so you
probably...

- there have been rumors that HP (who have a current  Itanium JDK on
HPUX) also had a version which runs on Linux, but I've never seen it.
If you have a request from an "HP General Manager" you should probably
ask him...

- there's a current commercial Linux/Itanium JDK available from SAP -
but it's not distributed standalone, only in conjunction with other
SAP products running on top of it.

- theres a current binary version of the JDK available for
Linux/Itanium from Oracle but this version is maintained by Intel and
only downloadable from Oracle.

The most interesting question (and probably the only chance for Java
on Linux/Itanium) will be if Intel will be able (legally) and willing
(financially) to further support its port (being it as binary download
or in the open trough OpenJDK). But I doubt you'll get an answer for
this question on this list.

Regards,
Volker

On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 11:49 PM, Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 7:02 PM, Frans Thamura <frans at meruvian.org> wrote:
>> 64 bit era is over?
>> F
>
> Itanium began being irrelevant when AMD came up with the AMD64
> architecture. Then Intel admited defeat when it embraced it, labelling
> it EM64T.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64
>
> http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1561875,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/08/xeon_amd64_fix/
>
> At Unisys, Itanium chip is dead
> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10167332-64.html
>
> The Intel Itanium is tottering towards death, analyst reckons
> http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-features/44828-the-intel-itanium-is-tottering-towards-death-analyst-reckons
>
> So, overall your concern is 6 years old... AMD64-EM64T beat IA64 years ago.
>
> FC
>