Indeed it was already in development, but from what I've read Intel did indeed incorporate some of the intellectual property in to Itanium from Alpha program[7] (which in turn incorporated much of the cancelled Prism[2] project within DEC[1])
-sc [1] Geek lore would have it that the "AXP" designator on the "Alpha AXP" chips stood for "Almost eXactly Prism"[3] [2] Another Cutler project[4] [3] The similarities were numerous: Palcode/Epicode, RISC instruction set, the layout tuning, some register implementation, etc... [4] No wonder NT[5] screamed on it [5] Although at the time, it was to be the CPU for Mica[6] [6] Which, as we've discussed here, was really NT v0.5 anyway [7] Altho substantial details of exactly WHAT are hard to come by > -----Original Message----- > From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] > Sent: Friday, July 16, 2010 9:09 AM > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: Re: Whining... > > On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 9:23 PM, Steven M. Caesare <scaes...@caesare.com> > wrote: > > I wonder when Itanium will finally be killed off. > > When it goes, the last _DIRECT_ lineage from Alpha goes away. > > Is Itanium really a direct descendant of the Alpha? I know Compaq later sold > the Alpha intellectual property to Intel, but Itanium was already on the > market by then. > > -- Ben > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ > <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
