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Intel

Itani-what?: Merced is Renamed 180

Anonymous Freak writes "Well, Intel has finally decided on a name for the first IA-64 processor. The processor formerly known as Merced is now called "Itanium". Boy, and I thought "Pentium" was a silly name when it first came out." Itanium - the mind boggles. Forget this - I'm still calling it Merced - although Itanium is targeted "at the Internet Economy" according to the press release *gag*.
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Itani-what?: Merced is Renamed

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  • by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @08:24AM (#1639884) Homepage Journal
    A name that just screams "TWO YEARS BEHIND SCHEDULE". :)

    You know how this name happened, btw. Some moron just misspelled the name of a lightweight metal.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • Silly me. I thought Sparcs and Alphas were the Internet processors. I mean, don't most of the 'real' websites run on them?

    Well bell my cat - it was Intel all along!

    Gawd, how much did Intel pay a marketing company for that clunker of a name?

    - -Josh Turiel
  • Well the problem with this is the '586' was the pentium and MMX pentium, the Ppro,PII,PIII,celery,Xeon,etc.. are the 686.
  • "throatwobbler mangrove"

    (You're a very silly corporation and I'm not going to interview you!" "Oh please?")
  • AMD's K7 had pretty good buzz, and was still renamed at the last minute to the moronic "Athlon". I think that they are required to have a marketing that's different from the internal project name. If they used the same name, the marketing guys wouldn't earn a paycheck and us nerd folks wouldn't be confused enough.

    -Barry
  • so i suppose you would be pronouncing it incorrectly (if you don't believe me, just look in a dictionary!
  • The Wonderful Wankometer [cynicalbastards.com] rates the press release as having a considerable wank quotient.
  • I looked all over the Intel press releases, and have yet to find a corporate sponsored pronunciation for the 'Itanium'. So here are a few of my suggestions.

    1. Titanicium
    2. Itty-bittium
    3. Icantium
    4. iWhackium
    5. Inferorium
    6. I'm sorry!
    7. Yes, we are on something!
    8. Merced
  • I would love to hear the reactions of the Intel engineers to this lame new name by the engineers who created Merced. After three years, I still can't get used to any of the names that marketing has applied to my product.
  • it loses the leading letter of its original name! You can picture the intel ad execs sitting around doodling about their new processor, the Titanium, when one would-be comic artist draws the T bursting into flames and falling off...

    and Andy Grove, in another fit of drunkenness, has them make it so.

    "Wait, no, Andy, it was just a dumb scribble! No, we can't put Superman in the ads, either!!" ...

  • by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @08:29AM (#1639899)
    "muinati" - much classier.


    Or, with a bit of help from an anagram generator:

    mini tau

    I am unit

    Hmmm... the first sounds like it's from Austin Powers, the second from Star Trek.


    --
    It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
  • by gonar ( 78767 ) <<ten.nozirev> <ta> <suoicilakraps>> on Monday October 04, 1999 @08:34AM (#1639901) Homepage
    unobtanium - cause you cant get one

    vaporium - cause it is all just hot air

    subathlonium - cause even with the extra 32 bits, it is still slower than athlon

    bankruptium - what it is gonna do for intel
  • If they were really trying to have an Internet-oriented name, they probably should have called this an eChip or eCPU to go along with eCommerce, eBusiness, and other such "stuff."

    The fact that it sounds somewhat like some obscure sort of "rare earth" metal is likely good for Intel; they can have some e1eete k001 commercials involving glowing metallic substances, not unlike one of Nokia's latest that shows off a chrome-bright cell phone rather than those boring old black ones. Itanium can provide us the burning chrome approach...

    This also provides a natural progression towards jokes involving the Hacker's Dictionary definition for "Chrome" which caused great hilarity when Microsoft announced Microsoft Chrome which not only conformed to the "useless but pretty" definition of Chrome, but actually used the same word to describe it. In effect, Itanium is Really Fancy Chrome!

    It's a nice bonus that the name leaves it to minor modifications of a scatalogical nature so as to allow Further Jokes. If the chip is rectangular, the next PPC commercial will doubtless show off a burned-up shrivelled-up, brown Itanium chip, leaving any comparisons to other materials to be filled in by the viewer...

  • All right. You'd think the marketing genii would have put a link to a .wav or something with the pronunciation of their new marketing jewel. [Not that Linus' .wav file has cleared up any confusion.]
    Now, is it I'-ta'-nee-um or i-ta'-nee-um? Or wait... could there be a schwa sound at the front? Why don't I have a key for an upside down e? If it was so damn important that they had to bug the sh*t out of me in elementary school, why isn't there a key for it when I want to use or discuss it? [If someone brings up alternative keyboards I'll begin firing my BFG indiscriminately into the crowd here at the post office.]


    _damnit_
  • Try doing a domain name search on "gwbush" or "bush", etc. There are just too many variations on "xxx-sucks", "xxxblows.com", etc. to make much of a dent by registering anything.
  • In fairness, It's possible he took 7min to type it up.
  • Itchium and Scratchium are next?
  • >late 2002: A low-cost version of the Itanium core comes out, called either "Asparagon" or "Vidalion"

    Nope, it's Oneon!

  • by CausticPuppy ( 82139 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @07:43AM (#1639914)
    I think it's a newly discovered highly radioactive element. Naturally, heavy elements of this sort are highly unstable and will decay in a matter of nanoseconds at best.

    Perhaps it really is a fitting name for this new chip after all?

  • I think someone at Intel watched the South Park "Pane'arium" episode too many times.

    Itanium? Titanium? It offers the deprecatory "sh" prefix, all too easily.
  • by LinuxParanoid ( 64467 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @08:52AM (#1639920) Homepage Journal
    I ntel
    T ries
    A lternate
    N ame --
    I t's
    U nbelievable
    M arketing!

  • Other bad future CPU names:

    12. Igermanium (for use in greenhouses, or for people in Berlin)
    11. Ifrancium (because the French like to be incompatible with everybody)
    10. Iboronium (for people who speak in a monotone)
    9. Iluminum (for people who are convinced they are highly intelligent)
    8. Isiliconium (for women ;-)
    7. Iargonium (for people with really bad grammar)
    6. Iscandium (for use by reporters)
    5. Iironium (for your health, or for use while doing the laundry)
    4. Ikryptonium (for sci-fi fanatics, or for deciphering messages)
    3. IHoSilverium (for Lone Ranger fans)
    2. Iridium (name available again now that the satellite system went under)
    1. Iranium (faulty product for sale to countries we don't like)
  • With the naming of this new chip as "Itanium" we now have proof that Intel is in league with the mafia. I suspect the next IA-64 chip following Itanium will be named "Sicilium"

  • that not the second version (called McKinley), as recently suggested, is now hoped to be the breakthrough for the IA64 design, but the third, which would carry the oh-so-spectacular name "Tritanium". :-)
  • by klund ( 53347 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @08:57AM (#1639925)
    % whois itanium.com

    Registrant:
    Intel Corporation (ITANIUM-DOM)
    2200 Mission College Blvd
    M/S SC4-203
    Santa Clara, CA 95052-8119

    Domain Name: ITANIUM.COM

    ... snip ...

    Record last updated on 01-Oct-98.
    Record created on 01-Oct-98.


    Record created 01-Oct-98? Have they really been planning on naming the ship "itanium" for ONE YEAR? You would have thought that they would have been able to come up with a better name in a *year's* time. Or at least though better of it...

    Ack.
  • by mindslip ( 16677 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @09:00AM (#1639926)
    "Targeted at the Internet Economy"?

    WTF is the "Internet Economy" and how do you "target" a chip at it?

    Is that like "targeting" the DreamCast at the pimple-geek economy?

    I picture going to the Trading Floor at your nearest stock exchange and whipping these things at anyone who buys and sells dot-com stocks.

    Hope itanium explodes on impact!

    Wonder how it reacts to heat as a catalyst? ;->

    mindslip
  • Does anyone else think that Octanium would have sounded really cool. I'm not a big fan of Intel and I think we should ditch the Merced for Alphas, but Octanium just sounds powerfull, doesn't it? Almost like a hotrod. This may be the most important decision for Intel's marketing department in years, and they probably have a whole team of people on it, and Itanium sounds dumb, and that's the best the could come up with, but you gotta give them credit for not naming the thing Pentium 2000. That would have been really great.
  • whereas Pentium--which originally referred to its status as the i586--was used again for the i686 and i786 chips.

    (i786? Wouldn't that be Willamette? The Pentium III, and the Xeon Warrior Princess flavors of the PII/PIII, are based on the same P6 CPU core, so I'd think of them as i686's.)

    I suspect Intel decided to use Pentium as the brand name for (all but the lower-end) IA-32 processors, preserving brand equity or whatever the hell the marketoon term is; I wouldn't be surprised to see McKinley be the Itanium II or something such as that.

  • Itanium is way to close to Titanic for comfort... High-tech equilvalent to freudian slip? Could Intel be prophesizing it's own doom? Is this an Omen?
  • That name would be a true bomb !
  • but "Merced" sounds pretty snappy to me.

    How do you pronouce that anyway? I always pronounce as murked (i.e. the past tense of murk), but I've heard mur-said, murk-ed, mur-ked, murk-id, mur-sid...

  • WTF is the "Internet Economy" and how do you "target" a chip at it?

    Hmmm... Internet Economy... well, let's see. What does a normal computer chip do that you don't need to stare at webpages? Hmmm... Floating point math! This is clearly just a marketing doublespeak way of saying:

    The Itanium can't divide.
    Sort of like a Pentium.

    Even more interesting is going to be the Intel marketing. How does one market such a wretched sounding name? Are they planning on selling this as a mixture of the Internet and the Pentium? Well, geeh, that's great. As if the Pentium did not already have enough privacy problems.

    Hmmm... Now all they need is a nice jingle...

    Lacking germanium, we made it out of wild geranium,
    Nullifying your privacy to a symposium!

    Itanium, it sounds like titanium!
    Itanium, it's less stable than uranium!

    Itanium, the only chip built in a gymnasium,
    Sending it strait to a crematorium!

    Itanium, it sounds like titanium!
    Itanium, it's less stable than uranium!

    Itanium, it's giving our lawyers a honorarium,
    You'd rather have Cryptosporidium!

    Itanium, it sounds like titanium!
    Itanium, it's less stable than uranium!

    I would love to see that on an Intel commercial!

  • It's "Titanium" you fools }};-)

    or is a dropped T the result of passing the string through some of intel's processors?

    And I really was waiting for Intel to release the "sextium" (follows from Pentium).
  • But this new one has an extra syllable, and doesnt flow as smoothly as Pentium did. Besides, 'Merced' has been used for so long, I think a lot of people will continue to call it that. Merced also isn't just a number, which will help keep the name around a bit longer.

  • by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @09:10AM (#1639942)
    ludicronym, n. - A ludicrous nonsense name given to a product for marketing purposes.


    --
    It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
  • by K-Man ( 4117 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @09:10AM (#1639943)
    You're all missing the point. The story was posted in 3-D Stereo, but you need an Itanium chip and special glasses to view it correctly.
  • It is well known in marketing that the general public can only count to three, a great example is Microsoft renaming Windows 4.0 to Windows 93, hm I mean 94, nope, sorry for the delay make that Windows 95.
  • If you thought all the coffee puns were bad when Java came out; if you thought you'd go postal if you read one more article with a title like "Getting Wired with Java", just wait and see what the next generation of metal synonyms will be like. I just love marketeers. We ask for a processor; they give us a bad pun.

    Is it studleyCapped as iTanium? Can we have a uTanium? A weTanium for SMP systems? Will aPple sue them for putting the letter "i" in front of nonsense?

    I guess if DS9 can c/Platinum/Latinum/, Intel can do the same to it's own products. What the hell was wrong with "Merced", anyway?

    --

  • I was still saving money for a sexyum or a Peon.


    --
    It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
  • Yeah, yeah.. this is redundant, off topic, and all that jazz. But, I feel compelled to reply.

    My first reaction to the thing was, "Intel has totally given up on marketing on the basis of quality, and value to the customer. What they're now doing is marketing on the basis of the *ignorance* of their new target market."

    Oh yeah, and I have a PPro 180 oc'ed to 233. My last intel processor ever, hopefully. The only things that don't run fast enough are certain games. (Remember when games used to be the *most* optimized programs out there?)
  • When did intel produce a 7th generation?

    Pentium 2, and Pentium 2 Xeon, are the same as a Pentium Pro, only with MMX instructions, and more (and in some cases slower) cache.

    Pentium 3 is the same as a Pentium 2, only with more new instructions, added to combat 3DNow

    Compare this with the differences between the 486 and the Pentium, or between the Pentium and the Pentium Pro. Now, *those* were significant enough to call them new generations.
  • What could possably be worse than version-number-racing?!? uh... oh.

    LINUX stands for: Linux Inux Nux Ux X
  • Spoken like a true zombie.

    Once upon a time school administrators preached the gospel of "you can never go wrong with IBM". First they resisted PCs in favor of their mainframes, then they resisted non-IBM PCs. They gave variation of the same reasons you mention. They dumped huge piles of scarce money at the doors of Big Blue. They continued to do this while systems costing half as much and twice as capable were available. Meanwhile the students they were supposedly there to serve were lined up to use the scarce computers.

    Administrators who waste money like this should be fired.

    School administrators frightened of learning something new have no business working in a school, where people are supposed to be all about learining new things.

    And furthermore, AMD CPUs are hardly "hacker hardware" (in the sense you mean). They're fast and inexpensive, a good bang for the buck. This leaves more money to buy other "hacker hardware". You know, more computers for those pesky students you're supposed to be helping!

    Adapt or move aside, but don't hold everyone else back just because you're afraid of change.

  • The logical successor to the Pentium to compete with the K7 would be the Septium. If you overclocked one, you'd have a deviated Septium.
  • Their first name was most of a nice car. (OK, for me it's a great car.) The new name is part of a great metal.

    I think one of the chief marketing people at intel has a hearing deficit and can't quite catch all of those conversations around the water cooler.

    Either that, or intel's PHBs are running their spell-checkers on their new chip prototypes.
    PKG
    ------------------------------
    Common sense is not so common.


  • 2006: Intel release Viagrium. A overdrive for the Titanium II that gives more power to the processor, and improves stability, helping it 'stay up' longer....

  • They haven't registered sexium.com, .net, .org yet?
  • I really can't stand those atrociously inane commercials intel has been putting on. You really have to be brain dead to not balk at them. Really...your chip is going to help me not only get ON the internet, but IN it. Wow that's great. Can I have another shot of ignorance please. Wait, maybe if my CPU is fast it will make MY internet (which I am IN) FASTER! This is too cool I guess I don't even need a modem or NIC now...since the PIII will get me in the internet. I wonder if I need an ISP.
  • titanic - with all the word's positive and negative connotations
  • Gee. I was stuck calling it the 586 until AMD released their 5x86, at which time most of the people I knew started calling it by the proper names, P54C and P54D. After a week of trying to say five-ex-eighty-six-one-thirty-three and laughing every damn time, I finally gave up and started referring to them as the AMD 133. (much more lyric, much like P54C-133 and P54D-233)
  • by bvmcg ( 71808 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @09:34AM (#1639962)

    Barrons [barrons.com] had an interesting piece on Intel this week, entitled "Intel NOT Inside."

    In that article as well, Intel claimed that it was targeting the internet economy. The implied reasoning was that the profit ratio is about the same on the $500 chips as the $100 Celeron, so they're about five times as lucrative. The article estimates that one server-class machine is needed for every ten consumer machines on the Internet.

    If consumer hardware is getting cheaper while server hardware is staying steady or even advancing in cost, we can see where the safe money's going to be for Intel.

    Given the above, and the article's further declaration that Intel has already made/is trying to make further inroads into the embedded controller market where switches, hubs, etc are concerned, we can determine that Internet Economy is obscure jargon for the Internet server and networking hardware market.

    --

    My question for Intel is whether it's prudent to explicitly remove emphasis from lower end systems (if that's what they truly intend). By Intel's admission, the $100 chips still make the same percentage profit. Wouldn't it make more sense to get on the ball and start pushing Microsoft and game developers to make use of SMP in consumer products, and to then push its low-end SMP-capable processors?

    Imagine the benefit to Intel (and us) if they let companies continue to make these sub-$1000-PCs, but if each had 3 spaces free for candy-colored $200 cartridge with another processor and a bit of RAM inside. Average consumers can finally buy that PC that lasts them 5 years, and Intel still gets (eventually) the full price of a server-class chip when people finally upgrade. (And I'll wager quite a few will if they can do it in sub $200 increments!)

  • by ChrisRijk ( 1818 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @09:34AM (#1639963)
    The developers and managers (and a 3rd party name consultancy firm Sun hired) came up with a top 10 list... Then Sun's lawyers picked the one that'd be easiest to trademark from that list.

    Scary... but sensible too.

  • Itanium reminds me Volkswagen's "Turbonium", which despite Intel's best effort, is still much stupider.

    I don't know what's worse... Volkswagen advertising its new car by showing it spinning like a top or Intel advertising a computer chip as making the Internet better, as if moire processing speed means better bandwidth (or disk I/O, which we all know is the real performance bottleneck!)

    Marketing seems to be getting stupider and stupider.

    Rick (happy with a 200MHz PPro)


  • Unless you work at Intel, AMD, or Motorola.

    Ahem...you forgot us Digital/Compaq Alpha people! :)
  • At least they aren't calling it the Sextium.
  • itanium. ecause e ike o rop he irst etter ff ords.
    ---
  • It means they dropped the 'T' off titanium and ran with it.
    ---
  • Of course not half a second after posting, I remember Hs.

  • That's right...They usually use name their projects internally by some location.
  • Oh great, now we're gonna have another holy war to keep track of.

    On one side, there will be the people who prefer to pronounce Itanium with a long a (like in "pay"), and on the other those who prefer a short a (like in "mad").
    Of course, the guy who invented the name won't be able to help, as he will prefer pronouncing the a as "ah", which everyone else will refuse to do because it sounds silly.

    -Kenton Varda
  • actually, I think one of the marketting people has been idolizing Volkswagon too much and saw their ad campaign for the VW Bug "Turbonium"... yes, it seems like these days it's "hip" to create imaginary heavy radioactive elements to sell products... GET WITH IT PEOPLE!!! The idea is kewl the first time around, the second time around it's just plain annoying.

    Originality is a blessing, not an excuse to steal someone else's idea.
  • Okay... I know mine aren't the oldest, but here goes: My main web surfing computer at home is a Macintosh Plus. 1MB of RAM, an external 30MB HD. I also use an SE/30 for web surfing. (I even have a slashdot account just for reading on them. I set it up so I could save the "lite, text only" version of slashdot.) And then there are the others: Atari ST, Commodore 64, TRS-80, Amiga 500, Apple ][e, Macintosh SE, IBM PC, IBM PC/XT, IBM PS/2 P70 (suitcase 386 with gas plasma display), Leading Edge Model 'D' (one of the first desktop clones.) Then there are the recent computers: Dual Pentium II/333, Celeron 466, K6-2/300, 486/100, PowerBook 5300c. All of the computers other than the PS/2 P70 are fully functional. The PS/2 forgot its configuration settings, and its floppy drive is broken. (It doesn't have a BIOS setup program, you have to boot from a special floppy disk, so I'm screwed until I repair the floppy.) Plus, spare parts: a couple pentium motherboards, a bunch of old processors, some spare ISA and PCI cards, some old 72-pin SIMMs. And a Palm V. And an HP 48GX. (I've surfed the web with it!) Whew! Did I miss anything? Now I just need to get ahold of that Intellivision Computer System...
  • If you look it up in any good Latin dictionary, you find that it roughly means, "an exchange between two parties in which one parties receives little value for its money."

    Of course, Webster reads as, "To be screwed. i.e., to be Bill Gate'd."


    This ends our class today.
  • Some folks claim Java is an acronym for Just Another Vague Acronym. Ok, so it isn't true. But it's rather amusing, isn't it?
  • I'm not the biggest fan of intel, but give credit where credit is due... They had "Pentium" which has the element-esque sound to it long before the new VW. And in actually, the name itanium.com was registered a year ago, well before the VW marketing campaign. Though "Itanium" has to be one of the lamest and trendy names for a product I have ever been exposed to, it *does* somewhat match the feel of their existing product in the sense of it being element-esque.
  • Trivia alert!

    What does TWAIN (the image input standard they use for most scanner drivers) stand for...?
  • You forgot the eye-tanium versus e-tanium versus ih-tanium pronunciation variances. I prefer the last one merely for the ease at which one would be able to add "sh" to the beginning.

    We whought we had it bad with "GIF" and "Linux".
  • ...anyway, who cares, Intel is sinking like that huge ship (what was its name...?)

    Perhaps, after that recent bug discovery, Intel should also rename Xeon to Xeonic...
  • The Carroton will also be offered with an fan that clips over it, called the Carrotop.
  • How about Sexium, Sexium Pro, Sexium II, Sexium III? Hell lot better than Itanium :)
  • At least "Itanium" is a reasonably original name, whereas Pentium--which originally referred to its status as the i586--was used again for the i686 and i786 chips. Still, it is a dreadful name. Here I was thinking that "Athlon" was bad...

    CPU nomenclature should revert to numbers and acronyms--there's just something that feels good about the words "SPARC" or "486DX2," for example.


  • Strange name, although I must admit i'm glad they didn't pick something like itanic instead.
    - MbM
  • Ooh Boy,

    the mind reels with potential Shakespearean references, here. I wonder if the next generation will be called the "Oberon"? Or if they will just cut the crap and show us their "Bottom"

    Or will they market this turkey with a "DS9" flair as a Ferengi invention and expect people to bid on 'em with bars of Latanum.

    I'm getting a G4 chip based box and I'll have gigaflop rather than a marketing-flop.
  • I think it's a marketing thing to change the name. People have heard the name "Merced" for years now and it keeps getting delayed. The only way to rekindle interest in the product is to change the name in hope that people will think it's something new and forget about all the delays with the original named product.



  • "with the new Itanium 64 bit you can ever more enjoy you pron site surfing: Itanium 64, the viagra of the processors."
  • Okay, okay. Fr, Ni, or Au would do too. But that's my final offer.

  • by Haven ( 34895 )
    I guess intel is trying to convice the big companies that run Sun and DEC hardware that they are major players when in comes to the incredibly high end internet servers. Most of these companies don't even consider intel an option at all when purchasing servers.


    For example: Recently I applied for a job at PlanetRX.com being one of their AIX admins. When I went into the interview they told me right off the bat that they aren't interested in any wINTEL or MAC experience. They didn't want MCSE(D). They wanted pure sun hardware experience with an expert knowledge of AIX and Solaris.


    I guess intel is realizing that they aren't being shown as a big server processor making company, and that they have to come up with buzz words and say things like they are the "Intel in Intelligent Ecommerce"
  • It was a silly name, and still is, but think of the marketing droids who were stumbling because the only identifiable brand they had was the number 86. They had to pick something.
  • Seems like it might be a better name for the chip formerly known a Merced. Unless performance improves dramatically it is going to look like the ~1994 comparison of the PPC and the P6. Isn't AMD going to bring out the K8 next year at 64bits?
  • by Illusion ( 1309 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @11:25AM (#1640008) Homepage
    Perhaps you can find other interesting nuggets in Intel's other domain registrations. Heres a hopefully complete list in .com/.net/.org:

    advice4pc.com
    advice4pcs.com
    adviceforpc.com
    adviceforpcs.com
    alder.com
    andrewgrove.net
    andrewgrove.org
    andrewsgrove.net
    andrewsgrove.org
    andygrove.com
    andygrove.net
    andygrove.org
    andysgrove.com
    andysgrove.net
    andysgrove.org
    answerexpress.com
    answerexpress.net
    answerexpress.org
    bunnypeople.com
    bunnypeople.net
    bunnypeople.org
    celeron.com
    celeron.net
    celeron.org
    cenarrion.com
    chips.com
    computersw.com
    connectedpc.com
    corollary.com
    craigbarrett.net
    craigbarrett.org
    craigrbarrett.com
    craigrbarrett.net
    craigrbarrett.org
    createshare.com
    createshare.net
    createshare.org
    dayna.com
    digitalguide-canada.com
    digitalguide-germany.com
    digitalguide-uk.com
    digitalstage.com
    direct-dial.com
    epigean.com
    etherprint.com
    gordonmoore.net
    gordonmoore.org
    hig.com
    intc.com
    intel-inside.net
    intel-inside.org
    intel.com
    intel.net
    intel.org
    intelceleron.com
    intelceleron.net
    intelceleron.org
    intellabs.com
    intelweboutfitter.com
    intelweboutfitter.net
    intelweboutfitter.org
    intelweboutfitters.com
    intercast.com
    intregister.com
    inymf.com
    itanium.com
    itanium.net
    itanium.org
    managedpc.com
    mmx.com
    multimediaextensions.com
    mycartoon.com
    mycartoons.com
    netpc.com
    opteon.com
    opteon.net
    opteon.org
    pc.com
    pcdads.com
    pcparents.com
    pentium.com
    pentium4.com
    pentium5.com
    pentium6.com
    pentiumiii.com
    pentiumiixeon.com
    pentiummmx.com
    shelfofshame.com
    shop-intel.com
    thiswayin.com
    toriac.com
    tv-rom.com
    tvrom.com
    weboutfitter.com
    weboutfitter.net
    weboutfitter.org
    xeon.com

  • by Anonymous Coward
    I'll bet it cost Intel several million $ to come up with that name. I read somewhere (don't ask me where) that Intel spend a million bucks for for someone to come up with Pentium. Maybe they should take some of the marketing budget and give it to engineering so they can make a chip that can add properly. (tounge in cheek!)
  • What about 'Octarine', as in the Pratchett Discworld series? ;)

    Colour of Magic, and all that - and it's red 'cos it overheats too? ;)
  • movie yah, how many times did you see it? 12? 20? but anyway, who is talking about the movie!?
  • Scared me for a little bit. It's still dumb to "announce" it twice on Slashdot.

    Other Slashdot Itanium article [slashdot.org]

    ~afniv
    "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
  • I think that Rob needs a Slashdot Duplicate Detector that works like this:
    • Somebody (Hemos, CmdrTaco, whoever) posts a story.
    • SDD gets a lock on the articles database.
    • SDD greps through all previous articles, looking for similarities (title, contents, and espcially links).
    • SDD prompts user, showing list of previous stories on the same topic. The user can choose to go ahead with posting, or abort.
    • SDD adds article to database, if requested.
    • SDD unlocks the database.
  • Knowing Intel, the Merceded, or Ita-whatever, will most likely only run on proproetary Intel motherboards(similarly as plans for the Celeron)...


    Another thing you have to consider is cost... If the P3 is a consumer chip and it costs $800, how much will this "Internet Chip" cost? You could probably get an entire AMD-based system for the cost of one Mercedes chip.

    Will it actually be worth it? Or will it be another chip the Intel cranks out, and they know people will buy it because they're Intel, and they're "the best".
  • What the hell was wrong with "Merced", anyway?

    I think Merced reached critical mass (criticality?) with Negative Mindshare. The stories about missed shipped dates, production problems, etc. had gotten so large that people were expecting the chip to fail regardless of how good it was, or of how accurate the stories were.

    inshort, the old name was FUD'ed to death
  • by GnrcMan ( 53534 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @10:10AM (#1640021) Homepage
    Perhaps it really is a fitting name for this new chip after all?

    Maybe...but I'd put my money on Itanic
  • "Pentium" I kind of like as a name, but Itanium? It doesn't quite roll off the tongue. I guess I understand AMD thinking "K7" isn't a very marketable name, but "Merced" sounds pretty snappy to me. I guess marketing has convinced them that they *have* to make up a name for their products to avoid trademark hassles.

    pity. Not that I like Intel much, but...pity.
    --Lenny
  • At least they didn't call it the e-tanium

  • But doesn't the "e" stand for "electronic"? Therefore, eCommerce and eBusiness make some sense, since the "e" helps to differentiate from bricks-and-mortar commerce and business.

    "eCPU" and "eChip", however, are redundant, since CPUs and chips are, by there very nature, electronic.

    Unless we're talking about potato chips... but I can't envision what an e(potato)Chip might be. Poker eChips, OTOH, might have some application in on-line gambling.

    --

  • Titanium sounds so rugged, sort of like those military computer cases. Are they rolling out rugged looking titanium military style cases to complement these? This would go along with the Eveready bunny commercials where the bunny is in a tank.
  • not only is it hot air, it'll generate it too! :D
  • by CausticPuppy ( 82139 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @07:53AM (#1640039)
    One thing's for sure, "Itanium" sticks out. It's so bizarre that it *has* to become a household word, which is exactly what intel wants.
    I think I can extrapolate some future Intel chip names based on their previous track record:

    2002: The Itanium II is introduced, with new AMI (Advanced Marketing Instructions) Technology(tm)

    late 2002: A low-cost version of the Itanium core comes out, called either "Asparagon" or "Vidalion"

    2004: Itanium III (duh)

    late 2005: Intel's first 128-bit CPU is announced, which will be named Delirium.

  • It's probably going to go for $3-5000 a pop. It's not geared at the desktop right now, err when it appears, but at the servers.... YOU don't want a Merced system when it comes out, unless it's for your department. Nor do I... But wait a few years to get the kinks out and for more and more applications to be ported to it. As the apps come, I reckon the price will drop because more and more people will have an actual reason to buy the chip
  • by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @07:56AM (#1640043) Journal
    After the incredibly annoying You-Must-Have-A-Pentium-III-To-Enjoy-The-Internet (despite your inability to actually find any sites that look even remotely as processor intensive as the ones in the commercial, that looked more like CAD/CAM), can you imagine the advertisements for the Intanium, which is NAMED after the darned network?

    "Intanium: This One Will Actually Enhance Your Internet Experience, Honestly!"

    "Intanium: If You Thought The 32-Bit Internet Was Great, Wait Until You See The 64-Bit Internet!"

    "Intanium: Databases Will Commit Transactions Like Never Before."

    You do have to look at it from Intel Marketing's point of view... how do you hype "Do Things Faster" when that's been your line for the last 20 years and is, apparently, wearing thin with the management.

    Still, I can think of a campaign targetting the slashdot crowd that would work well:

    "Intanium: Have A Computer More Powerful Then Most Servers You Visit!"

    Now that, that just sings to me, baby!
  • by alexalexis ( 31082 ) <alexalexis@hotmail.com> on Monday October 04, 1999 @12:38PM (#1640048)
    How much do you want to bet that the next generation of Celeron chips will be called the Opteon?

    I also think it's kind of funny they registered shelfofshame.com ..

    -Peat
  • intelsucks.net
    intelsucks.org
    xeonisslow.com
    xeonisslow.net
    xeonisslow.org
    mmxsucks.com
    etc...
    etc...

    I though I heard it was a trend of company's to register their name or product and sucks as in "xxxsucks.com" if only to not let other people take those sights and do something with them.

    -----

    By the way, if you moderate me down, you obviously have no sense of self... or humor....
  • It's straight out of Voyager...

    "Captain Janeway, we have no choice but to go around this solar system, it is contaminated with dangerous levels of itanium radiation from the Moron's toxic waste dump."

    "No, Seven, that would add days to our trip back home. We can enhance the shields with that alien technology we conveniently picked up at the Spinwise Central Delta Quadrant trade show and job fair last week."

    "That is efficient, but is the level of risk acceptable?"

    "What's the worst that can happen? If the shields fail we'll have an excuse for the writers to forget about it in future episodes. At worst we'll lose a shuttle craft and a couple of extras."

    "Very well, I will connect the alien technology to our deflector grid. It should only take a few hours despite the fact that we have no interfaces or protocols in common."
  • by Matt2000 ( 29624 ) on Monday October 04, 1999 @08:18AM (#1640061) Homepage
    Completed in the year 1999, the good chip Itanium set sail for the new world. They said it couldn't crash, that new technology made it invincible.

    However, late one night the ill-fated CPU struck a large 32-bit instruction floating somewhere in the "Internet information economy" which ripped a large hole in her stack and damaged her bus. With the cache on fire, the order was made to abandon chip.

    Luckily a nearby chip, the SS Athlon was able to support all of the Itanium's users and no lives were lost.

    Except for that damn Leo DiCaprio who exploded.

    Hotnutz.com [hotnutz.com]

With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once build a nuclear balm?

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