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General information | |
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Launched | June 2001[a] |
Discontinued | January 30, 2020[1] |
Marketed by | Intel |
Designed by | Intel Hewlett-Packard |
Common manufacturer | |
Performance | |
Max. CPU clock rate | 733 MHz to 2.66 GHz |
FSB speeds | 266 MT/s to 667 MT/s |
QPI speeds | 4.8 GT/s to 6.4 GT/s |
Data width | 64 bits |
Address width | 64 bits |
Virtual address width | 64 bits |
Cache | |
L1 cache | Up to 32 KB per core (data) Up to 32 KB per core (instructions) |
L2 cache | Up to 256 KB per core (data) Up to 1 MB per core (instructions) |
L3 cache | Up to 32 MB |
L4 cache | 32 MB (Hondo only) |
Architecture and classification | |
Application | High-end/mission critical servers High performance computing High-end workstations |
Technology node | 180 nm to 32 nm |
Microarchitecture | P7 |
Instruction set | IA-64 |
Extensions | |
Physical specifications | |
Cores |
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Memory (RAM) | |
Packages |
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Sockets | |
Products, models, variants | |
Core names |
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Models |
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Support status | |
Unsupported |
Itanium (/aɪˈteɪniəm/; eye-TAY-nee-əm) is a discontinued family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). The Itanium architecture originated at Hewlett-Packard (HP), and was later jointly developed by HP and Intel. Launched in June 2001, Intel initially marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance computing systems. In the concept phase, engineers said "we could run circles around PowerPC...we could kill the x86." Early predictions were that IA-64 would expand to the lower-end servers, supplanting Xeon, and eventually penetrate into the personal computers, eventually to supplant reduced instruction set computing (RISC) and complex instruction set computing (CISC) architectures for all general-purpose applications.
When first released in 2001 after a decade of development, Itanium's performance was disappointing compared to better-established RISC and CISC processors. Emulation to run existing x86 applications and operating systems was particularly poor. Itanium-based systems were produced by HP and its successor Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) as the Integrity Servers line, and by several other manufacturers. In 2008, Itanium was the fourth-most deployed microprocessor architecture for enterprise-class systems, behind x86-64, Power ISA, and SPARC.[6][needs update]
In February 2017, Intel released the final generation, Kittson, to test customers, and in May began shipping in volume.[7][8] It was only used in mission-critical servers from HPE.
In 2019, Intel announced that new orders for Itanium would be accepted until January 30, 2020, and shipments would cease by July 29, 2021.[1] This took place on schedule.[9]
Itanium never sold well outside enterprise servers and high-performance computing systems, and the architecture was ultimately supplanted by competitor AMD's x86-64 (also called AMD64) architecture. x86-64 is a compatible extension to the 32-bit x86 architecture, implemented by, for example, Intel's own Xeon line and AMD's Opteron line. By 2009, most servers were being shipped with x86-64 processors, and they dominate the low cost desktop and laptop markets which were not initially targeted by Itanium.[10] In an article titled "Intel's Itanium is finally dead: The Itanic sunken by the x86 juggernaut" Techspot declared "Itanium's promise ended up sunken by a lack of legacy 32-bit support and difficulties in working with the architecture for writing and maintaining software" while the dream of a single dominant ISA would be realized by the AMD64 extensions.[11]
...the 9700 series will be the last Intel Itanium processor.
Gartner 2009-q4
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