Open Letter to “Intel” on “Itanium”

I will immediately warn you that we are talking about a rather humorous letter sent at one time (16 June 2000) to “Intel” from students of the IVT-297 group, who were then studying the “Organization of Computers and Systems” discipline under the guidance of Valery B. Bulankin, associate professor of the “Computing Technics” chair at Vladimir State University. While we were about to take an exam in this discipline, Intel “blithely” continued to prepare its first 64-bit “Itanium” processor (also known as “Merced”) for release, completely unaware that if it was released before our exam, we would have to include it in our exam preparation program, that was a very extensive even without it… Something had to be done – that is how this letter appeared.

June 16, 2000

Dear Gentlemen,

We are students major in computer science studying at Vladimir State University, Russia. This semester we have a basic and very important course of lectures on computer architecture. Our reader, Mr. Valery B. Bulankin is really one of the best people who can tell you almost everything about computers starting with “ENIAC” and up to “Itanium”. He gave us so much information to prepare for our exam so we are very “impressed”. Plus, he is always “up to date”, and every new product/technology is to be studied. This means, if “Itanium” comes out before our exam (June 19, 2000), even a few hours earlier, we will have to find information about its structure, fuctionality, etc., and to put it into our minds to show the knowledge on the exam!

So we are here to ask: please, do not release “Itanium” before June 19, 2000! It sounds strange that we do not care about market events that may be caused by the delay. We even can understand that you may be laughing while reading these words but, please, help Russian students to pass the exam without “Itanium”! We do promise to study it later, to help it be commercially and functionally successful, etc.

However, we would be very very pleased if you (1) smile at least one time reading this, and (2) send us any official and/or educational information on the coming “Itanium”. We do appreciate everything you do for computer world, and we wish you neverending success in researching, designing and releasing!

From Russia with love, students of IVT-297 group, Faculty of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Vladimir State University.

There was no obvious answer, as expected. But “Itanium” still did not come out before our exam! 😊