Dear All

In our Institute,
there is no Itanium machine so far and no plan to purchase it in near 
future.
Since we don't have any machine, it's  impossible to provide such 
support without handing-on experience.

Have anybody evaluated how many Itanium machines might reinstall the 
current OS to SL once
SL ia64 distribution is ready ?

Regards
Sugl Wu

Kuo Kan Liang wrote:
> Troy and all,
>
> Itanium is pretty expensive for the budget I have, and many friends 
> told me to buy Athlon and never think about Itanium, even though dual 
> core Itanium 2 IS coming SOON (?). Well I do not have the ability to 
> help maintaining SL ia64. But I am very curious why CERN is phasing 
> out Itanium. What architecture are they planning to use?
>
> Regards,
> K.K.Liang
>
>> Currently CERN is doing all of the work for the Itanium (ia64) 
>> support in Scientific Linux.  This is because they have Itanium 
>> machines.
>> CERN's hardware roadmap has them phasing out Itanium's, and 
>> eventually getting rid of all of them.  When this happens CERN will 
>> no longer to support the ia64 port of Scientific Linux.  This is not 
>> going to happen overnight, or in a few months, but it will happen.
>> We have asked the High Energy Physic's community at the last two 
>> HEPIX conferences, if anyone will be affected, and both time's, 
>> nobody said that they would.
>>
>> I am now asking the question to the general Scientific Linux 
>> development community.  Is there a lab, univerisity, or organization 
>> that not only needs Scientific Linux on ia64, but is also willing to 
>> support it?
>>
>> The main developers have all agreed that it's ok by us if ia64 goes 
>> away gracefully.  We don't want ia64 hanging around if nobody is 
>> using it. But on the other hand, if someone needs it, and is willing 
>> to put forth the effort to support it, we will be willing to keep it 
>> in the distribution.
>
>
>