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Definition: Itanium


(1) For the chemical element Ti, see Titanium.

(2) A CPU family from Intel introduced in 2001 that was designed to supersede x86-based servers. Although advanced and even with HP as its major supporter, Itanium gained only a fraction of the x86 market. In addition, the compilers necessary to take full advantage of Itanium's elaborate architecture were never fully developed. In the meantime, Intel kept upgrading its x86 CPUs, first to 64 bits and then with advanced security and fault detection in the Xeon line. See x86 and Xeon.

HP Unix (HP-UX) and other Unix versions ran on Itanium; however, starting in the 2010 time frame, Itanium versions of Windows Server, Red Hat Linux and Ubuntu Linux were given end of life. In 2021, Itanium was discontinued with support until 2025.

Native, x86 and PA-RISC Apps
In addition to running native applications, Itaniums emulated x86 and HP PA-RISC apps. An x86 program could be executed in hardware or software (see IA-32 Execution Layer), but PA-RISC apps were translated in software (see Aries). For more on the architecture, see IA-64.

 Model           Process  Max.
            Year   Tech.  Clock  Max.
 Code Name  Intro  (nm)   Speed  Cores

 Itanium
 Merced     2001   180  800 MHz   1

 Itanium 2
 McKinley   2002   180  1.0 GHz   1
 Madison    2003   130  1.6 GHz   1
 Deerfield  2003   130  1.0 GHz   1
 Hondo      2004   130  1.1 GHz   1
 Fanwood    2004   130  1.6 GHz   1
 Madison    2004   130  1.7 GHz   1

 Montecito  2006    90  1.6 GHz   2
 Montvale   2007    90  1.7 GHz   2
 Tukwila    2010    65  1.7 GHz   4
 Poulson    2013    32  2.5 GHz   8
 Kittson    2017    32  2.6 GHz   8