
Oracle ordered to pay HP $3B in Itanium case - nairteashop
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-hewlett-packard-oracle-verdict-idUSKCN0ZG3C1
======
rrmm
Intel has had some bad luck trying to move past x86. ia432, i860, i960 (which
found niche markets), and ia64.

The revisions to the sales forecasts from market research companies were ugly
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Itanium_Sales_Forecasts_e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Itanium_Sales_Forecasts_edit.png)

And it killed MIPS and ALPHA architectures on the server, but I guess ended up
pushing everyone towards x86 while ia64 was delayed until AMD jumped in an
released x86-64.

~~~
pjmlp
I believe if AMD hadn't released x86-64, our desktops would be running on
Itaniums.

It would take some time to sort of the issues, but given the Wintel stronghold
on the desktop, everyone would be moving screaming into Itanium and feel happy
about it later on.

But AMD gave people an alternative, so Itanium died.

~~~
newscracker
The Wintel platform (stack) has relied on backward compatibility for long to
hold on to the userbase. So moving to Itanium just wasn't in its blood or
character and wouldn't have happened easily even if AMD hadn't jumped in with
x64.

The Itanium architecture and processor development was happening for a very,
very long time (code name "Merced", IIRC) and didn't have much to show for due
to incompatibility with x86.

~~~
pjmlp
Sure it would have been a slow process, but Windows was already available and
Microsoft could have done just like Apple did.

Intel would announce x86 EOL and legacy apps would be emulated or JiTted on
Itanium.

Their problem was that Intel wasn't the only company producing x86 chips.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Also happened for VMS and AS/400\. Further, recall that Transmeta invented HW
JIT for x86 to run it on power-efficient, non-x86 corr. Finally, Loongson is
doing x86 emulation on top of MIPS multicore.

So, there's plenty precedent that your scenario could've played out. Don't
forget alternative, though, where Centaur/VIA could just receive a gigantic
shift in business their way. Or AMD just keeps accelerating x86. Actually,
AMD64 seems inevitable in this scenario.

------
pinewurst
Several years ago Oracle posted some very amusing HP internal documents about
their Itanium efforts:

[http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/itanium-346707.h...](http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/itanium-346707.html)

~~~
nigwil_
Thanks for the link. I tried to search for the trial exhibits but didn't find
anything comprehensive. Any idea how we could see all the trial exhibits, as
in both sides? thanks.

------
scriptproof
They complained to be screwed by Google with Java, that is false, but at the
same time are not afraid to screw HP. They had a contract to a long term
support of Itanium and dropped it after one year to annoy HP (there were
several trials between the two companies at this moment).

~~~
gogopuppygogo
Actually makes me feel good to read that they are on the hook for this given
how their customers were left in a lurch over this.

------
youdontknowtho
OUCH.

It's weird that companies that companies who compete so fiercely in the same
markets really ever manage to work together. Once Oracle became a systems
manufacturer HP had to know that they would boff them.

From a technical perspective, the stuff that HP has in Nonstop, OpenVMS, and
Super Dome are really impressive. I read that they sold OpenVMS to a third
party that is busy porting to x64. Looking forward to running it in VM's for
fun...because I have a weird sense of fun. Stop judging me.

~~~
nickpsecurity
You heard right:

[https://vmssoftware.com/about_faq.html](https://vmssoftware.com/about_faq.html)

------
paulgerhardt
Mentioned in the article but always amazing - Bryan Cantrill on Oracle killing
Open Source:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc)

"Don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison"

------
sverige
From the article: In a statement, Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley said the
company had been providing all its latest software for Itanium servers since
Kleinberg's decision.

So does this mean they actually continued to work on it, but just told HP
there was no market and had stopped work?

~~~
tw04
It didn't matter at that point. Customers fled from Itanium in DROVES when
Oracle made the announcement. By the time they quietly decided to keep
releasing updates, the damage was done.

It was an extremely effective tactic by Oracle to get customers to move away
from HP... extremely dirty, but effective.

------
Jgrubb
scha·den·freu·de

/ˈSHädənˌfroidə/

noun

pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune.

~~~
gaius
Why is there a word for it in German? Also doppelganger. Must happen alot
there!

~~~
bostonpete
Schadenfreude is an English word. Virtually all English words are originated
or derived from other languages...

~~~
euyyn
That's like replying to his words without really thinking about what he meant.

Schadenfreude is an obvious borrowing from German. His question is why did
they have a word for it in the first place.

~~~
bostonpete
Well, my point still stands. Given that the vast majority of English words are
borrowed from other languages, why don't we ask the same question about all
sorts of words? Maybe this word is uniquely German and doesn't have an
equivalent in other languages -- I don't know enough about other languages to
know that without further investigation -- but the mere fact that a word was
borrowed from German to English doesn't seem like reason enough to ask _why_
it's a German word.

------
reallydontask
I heard at a conference from some HP exec, that they sold loads of HP
Integrity servers to Asian customers mainly so that they could host MS SQL
Server on those big boxes, which I found surprising

~~~
krylon
On the one hand, IIRC, Windows Server on Itanium was almost useless for
anything _but_ running SQL Server.

On the other hand, I think I remember reading a couple of years ago that per
CPU core, Xeons were already beating Itaniums in performance for database
workloads. The main advantage apparently is that you can stuff lots of CPUs
into an Integrity server, but mostly a cluster of smaller x86_64 machines has
a good chance of being faster and cheaper.

~~~
yuhong
I wonder if any Opteron node controllers caught on. The fun thing is that by
the time Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2000 was released for Itanium, AMD
had already released the Opteron, but the B1 stepping had plenty of problems
which was probably why they didn't release Athlon 64 until the C0 stepping.

------
CodeSheikh
Karma is a -----

