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Itanium



 
 
Itanium is the brand name for 64-bit Intel microprocessor
Microprocessor

A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit . The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using Binary-coded decimal arithmetic on 4-bit Word ....
s that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Intel has released two processor families using the brand: the original Itanium and the Itanium 2. Starting November 1, 2007, new members of the second family are again called Itanium. The processors are marketed for use in enterprise server
Enterprise server

An enterprise server is a computer system which performs an essential service for a large organization. Examples include corporate World Wide Web Server s, Computer printer servers, and databases....
s and high-performance computing
High-performance computing

High-performance computing uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers....
 systems. The architecture
Computer architecture

Computer architecture in computer engineering is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system. It is a blueprint and functional description of requirements and design implementations for the various parts of a computer, focusing largely on the way by which the central processing unit performs internally an...
 originated at Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard

The Hewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States....
 (HP) and was later developed by HP and Intel together.

Itanium's architecture differs dramatically from the x86 architectures (and the x86-64
X86-64

x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities....
 extensions) used in other Intel processors.






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Encyclopedia


Itanium is the brand name for 64-bit Intel microprocessor
Microprocessor

A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit . The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using Binary-coded decimal arithmetic on 4-bit Word ....
s that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Intel has released two processor families using the brand: the original Itanium and the Itanium 2. Starting November 1, 2007, new members of the second family are again called Itanium. The processors are marketed for use in enterprise server
Enterprise server

An enterprise server is a computer system which performs an essential service for a large organization. Examples include corporate World Wide Web Server s, Computer printer servers, and databases....
s and high-performance computing
High-performance computing

High-performance computing uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers....
 systems. The architecture
Computer architecture

Computer architecture in computer engineering is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system. It is a blueprint and functional description of requirements and design implementations for the various parts of a computer, focusing largely on the way by which the central processing unit performs internally an...
 originated at Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard

The Hewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States....
 (HP) and was later developed by HP and Intel together.

Itanium's architecture differs dramatically from the x86 architectures (and the x86-64
X86-64

x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities....
 extensions) used in other Intel processors. The architecture is based on explicit instruction-level parallelism, in which the compiler
Compiler

A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language . The most common reason for wanting to transform source code is to create an executable program....
 makes the decisions about which instructions to execute in parallel. By contrast, other superscalar
Superscalar

A superscalar Central processing unit architecture implements a form of parallel computer called instruction level parallelism within a single processor....
 architectures depend on elaborate processor circuitry to keep track of instruction dependencies during runtime. This alternative approach helps current Itanium processors execute up to six instructions per clock cycle.

After a protracted development process, the first Itanium processor, codenamed
List of Intel codenames

Intel has historically named integrated circuit development projects after geographical names of towns, rivers or mountains near the location of the Intel facility responsible for the IC....
 Merced, was released in 2001, and more powerful Itanium processors have been released periodically. HP produces most Itanium-based systems, but several other manufacturers have also developed systems based on Itanium. , Itanium is the fourth-most deployed microprocessor architecture for enterprise-class systems, behind x86-64
X86-64

x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities....
, IBM POWER
IBM POWER

POWER is a RISC instruction set architecture designed by International Business Machines. The name is a backronym for Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC....
, and SPARC
SPARC

SPARC is a Reduced Instruction Set Computer microprocessor instruction set Computer architecture originally designed in 1985 by Sun Microsystems....
. Intel released its newest Itanium, codenamed
List of Intel codenames

Intel has historically named integrated circuit development projects after geographical names of towns, rivers or mountains near the location of the Intel facility responsible for the IC....
 Montvale, in November 2007, Intel announced plans to release a quad-core Itanium processor (code-named Tukwila) to server OEMs in late 2008, and subsequently announced a delay until mid 2009, more than two years later than Intel's initial projection.

Industry pundit John C. Dvorak
John C. Dvorak

John Charles Dvorak is an United States columnist and broadcaster in the areas of technology and computer. His writing extends back to the 1980s, when he was a mainstay of a variety of magazines....
, commenting in 2009 on the history of the Itanium processor, said "This continues to be one of the great fiascos of the last 50 years." Tech columnist Ashlee Vance
Ashlee Vance

Ashlee Vance is an American columnist. He is primarily known for writing for The Register from March 2003 to August 2008, but moved to the New York Times in September 2008....
 comments that the delays and underperformance "turned the product into a joke in the chip industry."

History


Development: 1989–2001

In 1989, HP determined that reduced instruction set computer
Reduced instruction set computer

The acronym RISC , for reduced instruction set computing, represents a CPU design strategy emphasizing the insight that simplified instructions that "do less" may still provide for higher performance if this simplicity can be utilized to make instructions execute very quickly....
 (RISC) architectures were approaching a processing limit at one instruction per cycle
Instructions Per Cycle

In computer architecture, Instructions Per Clock is a term used to describe one aspect of a central processing unit's performance: the average number of instruction s executed for each clock cycle....
. HP researchers investigated a new architecture, later named explicitly parallel instruction computing
Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing

Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing is a term coined in 1997 by the Itanium to describe a computing paradigm that began to be researched in the early 1980s....
 (EPIC), that allows the processor to execute multiple instructions
Instruction (computer science)

In computer science, an instruction is a single operation of a central processing unit defined by an instruction set architecture. In a broader sense, an "instruction" may be any representation of an element of an executable program, such as a bytecode....
 in each clock cycle. EPIC implements a form of very long instruction word
Very long instruction word

Very Long Instruction Word or VLIW refers to a Central processing unit architecture designed to take advantage of instruction level parallelism ....
 (VLIW) architecture, in which a single instruction word contains multiple instructions. With EPIC, the compiler
Compiler

A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language . The most common reason for wanting to transform source code is to create an executable program....
 determines in advance which instructions can be executed at the same time, so the microprocessor simply executes the instructions and does not need elaborate mechanisms to determine which instructions to execute in parallel. The goal of this approach is two-fold: first, to enable deeper inspection of the code to identify additional opportunities for parallel execution; and, second, to simplify processor design and reduce energy consumption by eliminating the need for runtime scheduling circuitry.

HP determined that it was no longer cost-effective for individual enterprise systems companies such as itself to develop proprietary microprocessors, so HP partnered with Intel in 1994 to develop the IA-64 architecture, which derived from EPIC. Intel was willing to undertake a very large development effort on IA-64 in the expectation that the resulting microprocessor would be used by the majority of enterprise systems manufacturers. HP and Intel initiated a large joint development effort with a goal of delivering the first product, Merced, in 1998.

During development, Intel, HP, and industry analysts predicted that IA-64 would dominate in servers, workstations, and high-end desktops, and eventually supplant RISC and complex instruction set computer
Complex instruction set computer

A complex instruction set computer is a computer instruction set architecture in which each instruction can execute several low-level operations, such as a load from Memory , an arithmetic operator, and a memory , all in a single instruction....
 (CISC) architectures for all general-purpose applications. Compaq
Compaq

Compaq Computer Corporation was an United States personal computer company founded in 1982, and is now a brand name of Hewlett-Packard Company....
 and Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a company manufacturer high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and computer software. SGI was founded by James H....
 decided to abandon further development of the Alpha
DEC Alpha

Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, was a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations....
 and MIPS architecture
MIPS architecture

MIPS is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . In the mid to late 1990s, it was estimated that one in three RISC microprocessors produced were MIPS implementations....
s respectively in favor of migrating to IA-64.

Several groups developed operating systems for the architecture, including Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
, Linux
Linux

Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license...
, and UNIX
Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
 variants such as HP-UX
HP-UX

HP-UX 11i is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary software implementation of the Unix operating system, based on UNIX System V . It runs on the HP 9000 PA-RISC-based range of central processing unit and HP Integrity Intel's Itanium-based systems, and was also available for later Apollo/Domain systems....
, Solaris,

Tru64 UNIX
Tru64 UNIX

Tru64 UNIX is a 64-bit UNIX operating system for the DEC Alpha instruction set architecture , currently owned by Hewlett-Packard . Previously, Tru64 UNIX was a product of Compaq, and before that, Digital Equipment Corporation , where it was known as Digital UNIX ....
, and Monterey/64
Project Monterey

Project Monterey was an attempt to build a single Unix operating system that ran across a variety of 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, as well as supporting multi-processing....
 (the latter three were canceled before reaching the market). By 1997, it was apparent that the IA-64 architecture and the compiler were much more difficult to implement than originally thought, and the delivery of Merced began slipping. Technical difficulties included the very high transistor counts needed to support the wide instruction words and the large caches. There were also structural problems within the project, as the two parts of the joint team used different methodologies and had slightly different priorities. Since Merced was the first EPIC processor, the development effort encountered more unanticipated problems than the team was accustomed to. In addition, the EPIC concept depends on compiler capabilities that had never been implemented before, so more research was needed.

Intel announced the official name of the processor Itanium, on October 4, 1999. Within hours, the name Itanic had been coined in an online chat room, a reference to Titanic
RMS Titanic

The Royal Mail Ship Titanic was an Olympic class ocean liner superliner owned by the White Star Line and built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland....
, the "unsinkable" ocean liner
Ocean liner

An ocean liner is a passenger ship designed to transport people from one seaport to another along regular long-distance maritime routes according to a schedule....
 which sank in 1912. Itanic has since often been used by The Register
The Register

The Register is a United Kingdom technology news and opinion website. It was founded by John Lettice and Mike Magee in 1994 as a newsletter called "Chip Connection", initially as an email service....
, Scott McNealy
Scott McNealy

Scott McNealy is the Chairman of Sun Microsystems, the computer technology company he co-founded in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim....
, and others, implying that the multibillion dollar investment in Itanium—and the tremendous early hype—would be followed by its relatively quick demise.

Itanium (Merced): 2001–02


By the time Itanium was released in June, 2001, it was no longer superior to contemporaneous RISC and CISC processors. Itanium competed at the low-end (primarily 4-CPU and smaller systems) with servers based on x86 processors, and at the high end with IBM's POWER
IBM POWER

POWER is a RISC instruction set architecture designed by International Business Machines. The name is a backronym for Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC....
 architecture and Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational corporation vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982....
' SPARC
SPARC

SPARC is a Reduced Instruction Set Computer microprocessor instruction set Computer architecture originally designed in 1985 by Sun Microsystems....
 architecture. Intel repositioned Itanium to focus on high-end business and HPC
High-performance computing

High-performance computing uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers....
 computing, attempting to duplicate x86's successful "horizontal" market (i.e., single architecture, multiple systems vendors). The success of this initial processor version was limited to replacing PA-RISC and Alpha
DEC Alpha

Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, was a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation , designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer ISA and its implementations....
 in HP systems and MIPS
MIPS architecture

MIPS is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . In the mid to late 1990s, it was estimated that one in three RISC microprocessors produced were MIPS implementations....
 in SGI's
Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a company manufacturer high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and computer software. SGI was founded by James H....
 HPC
High-performance computing

High-performance computing uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers....
 systems, though IBM also delivered a supercomputer based on this processor. POWER and SPARC remained strong, while the 32-bit x86 architecture continued to grow into the enterprise space. With economies of scale fueled by its enormous installed base, x86 has remained the preeminent "horizontal" architecture in enterprise computing.

Only a few thousand systems using the original Merced Itanium processor were sold, due to relatively poor performance, high cost and limited software availability. Recognizing that the lack of software could be a serious issue moving forward, Intel made thousands of these early systems available to independent software vendors (ISVs) to stimulate development. HP and Intel brought the next-generation Itanium 2 processor to market a year later.

Itanium processor family
Itanium
Original logoVersion 2 logo2006 logo2008 new logo


Itanium 2: 2002–present

The Itanium 2 processor was released in 2002, and was marketed for enterprise servers rather than for the whole gamut of high-end computing. The initial Itanium 2 was codenamed
List of Intel codenames

Intel has historically named integrated circuit development projects after geographical names of towns, rivers or mountains near the location of the Intel facility responsible for the IC....
 McKinley. McKinley was manufactured using a 180 nm process technology, and relieved many of the performance problems of the original Itanium processor.

In 2003, AMD
Advanced Micro Devices

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. is an United States multinational corporation semiconductor industry company based in Sunnyvale, California, that develops Central processing unit and related technologies for commercial and consumer markets....
 released the Opteron
Opteron

The Opteron is Advanced Micro Devices's x86 server Central processing unit line, and was the first processor to implement the AMD64 instruction set architecture ....
, which implemented its 64-bit architecture (x86-64
X86-64

x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities....
). Opteron gained rapid acceptance in the enterprise server space because it provided an easy upgrade from x86. Intel responded by implementing x86-64
X86-64

x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities....
 in its Xeon
Xeon

The Xeon brand refers to many families of Intel Corporation's x86 architecture multiprocessing Central processing units ? for dual processor and multi-processor configuration on a single motherboard targeted at non-consumer markets of server and workstation computers, and also at blade servers and embedded systems....
 microprocessors in 2004. Intel released a new Itanium 2 family member, codenamed
List of Intel codenames

Intel has historically named integrated circuit development projects after geographical names of towns, rivers or mountains near the location of the Intel facility responsible for the IC....
 Madison, in 2003. Madison used a 130 nm process and was the basis of all new Itanium processors until Montecito was released in June 2006.

In March, 2005, Intel announced that it was working on a new Itanium processor, codenamed Tukwila
Tukwila (processor)

Tukwila is the code-name for a future generation of Intel's Itanium processor family following Itanium 2 and Montecito . It was expected to come to market in late 2008....
, to be released in 2007. Tukwila would have four processor cores and would replace the Itanium bus with a new Common System Interface
Common System Interface

The Intel QuickPath Interconnect is a point-to-point processor Electrical connection developed by Intel to compete with HyperTransport. Prior to the announcement of the name, Intel referred to it as Common System Interface or "CSI"....
, which would also be used by a new Xeon processor. Intel later said that Tukwila would be delivered in late 2008.

In November 2005, the major Itanium server manufacturers joined with Intel and a number of software vendors to form the Itanium Solutions Alliance to promote the architecture and accelerate software porting. The Alliance announced that its members would invest $10 Billion in Itanium solutions by the end of the decade.

In 2006, Intel delivered Montecito, a dual-core processor that roughly doubled performance and decreased energy consumption by about 20 percent. Quad-core Tukwila processors are still expected to be available to OEMs in late 2008, with systems reaching the marketplace in early 2009.

In comparison with its Xeon family of server processors, Itanium is not a high-volume product for Intel. Intel does not release production numbers, but one industry analyst estimated that the production rate was 200,000 processors per year in 2007. According to Gartner Inc.
Gartner

Gartner, Inc. is an information technology research and advisory firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, Connecticut. It was known as The Gartner Group until 2001....
, the total number of Itanium servers sold by all vendors in 2007 was about 55,000. This compares with 417,000 RISC servers (spread across all RISC vendors) and 8.4 million x86 servers. From 2001 through 2007, IDC reports that a total of 184,000 Itanium-based systems have been sold. For the combined POWER/SPARC/Itanium systems market, IDC reports that POWER captured 42% and SPARC captured 32%, while Itanium-based system revenue reached 26% in the second quarter of 2008. According to an IDC analyst, in 2007 HP accounted for perhaps 80% of Itanium systems revenue. According to Gartner, in 2008 HP accounted for 95% of Itanium sales.

Architecture

Itanium Arch
Intel has extensively documented the Itanium instruction set
Instruction set

An instruction set is a list of all the instruction , and all their variations, that a processor can execute.Instructions include:* Arithmetic such as add and subtract...
 and microarchitecture
Computer architecture

Computer architecture in computer engineering is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system. It is a blueprint and functional description of requirements and design implementations for the various parts of a computer, focusing largely on the way by which the central processing unit performs internally an...
, and the technical press has provided overviews. The architecture has been renamed several times during its history. HP originally called it PA-WideWord. Intel later called it IA-64, then Itanium Processor Architecture (IPA), before settling on Intel Itanium Architecture, but it is still widely referred to as IA-64. It is a 64-bit register-rich explicitly-parallel architecture. The base data word is 64 bits, byte-addressable. The logical address
Logical address

In Data Networks:In computer networks, a logical address refers to a network layer address such as an IP address, an X.25/X.121 or IPX address....
 space is 264 bytes. The architecture implements predication
Branch predication

Branch predication is a strategy in computer architecture design for mitigating the costs usually associated with conditional branch es, particularly branches to short sections of code....
, speculation
Speculative execution

In computer science, speculative execution is the execution of Code , the result of which may not be needed. In the context of functional programming, the term "speculative evaluation" is used instead....
, and branch prediction. It uses a hardware register renaming
Register renaming

In computer engineering, register renaming refers to a technique usedto avoid unnecessary serialization of program operations imposed by the reuse...
 mechanism rather than simple register windowing for parameter passing. The same mechanism is also used to permit parallel execution of loops. Speculation, prediction, predication, and renaming are under control of the compiler: each instruction word includes extra bits for this. This approach is the distinguishing characteristic of the architecture.

The architecture implements 128 integer registers
Processor register

In computer architecture, a processor register is a small amount of Computer storage available on the CPU whose contents can be accessed more quickly than storage available elsewhere....
, 128 floating point
Floating point

In computing, floating point describes a system for numerical representation in which a String of digits represents a rational number.The term floating point refers to the fact that the radix point can "float": that is, it can be placed anywhere relative to the Significant figures of the number....
 registers, 64 one-bit predicates, and eight branch registers. The floating point registers are 82 bits long to preserve precision for intermediate results.

Instruction execution

Each 128-bit instruction word contains three instructions
Instruction (computer science)

In computer science, an instruction is a single operation of a central processing unit defined by an instruction set architecture. In a broader sense, an "instruction" may be any representation of an element of an executable program, such as a bytecode....
, and the fetch mechanism can read up to two instruction words per clock from the L1 cache
CPU cache

A CPU cache is a cache used by the central processing unit of a computer to reduce the average time to access computer storage. The cache is a smaller, faster memory which stores copies of the data from the most frequently used main memory locations....
 into the pipeline. When the compiler can take maximum advantage of this, the processor can execute six instructions per clock cycle. The processor has thirty functional execution units in eleven groups. Each unit can execute a particular subset of the instruction set
Instruction set

An instruction set is a list of all the instruction , and all their variations, that a processor can execute.Instructions include:* Arithmetic such as add and subtract...
, and each unit executes at a rate of one instruction per cycle unless execution stalls waiting for data. While not all units in a group execute identical subsets of the instruction set, common instructions can be executed in multiple units.

The execution unit groups include:
  • Six general-purpose ALUs, two integer units, one shift unit
  • Four data cache units
  • Six multimedia units, two parallel shift units, one parallel multiply, one population count
  • Two floating-point multiply-accumulate
    Multiply-accumulate

    In computing, especially digital signal processing, multiply-accumulate is a common operation that computes the product of two numbers and adds that product to an accumulator ....
     units, two "miscellaneous" floating-point units
  • Three branch units


The compiler can often group instructions into sets of six that can execute at the same time. Since the floating-point units implement a multiply-accumulate operation, a single floating point instruction can perform the work of two instructions when the application requires a multiply followed by an add: this is very common in scientific processing. When it occurs, the processor can execute four FLOP
Flop

Flop may refer to:...
s per cycle. For example, the 800 MHz Itanium had a theoretical rating of 3.2 GFLOPS
FLOPS

In computing, FLOPS is an acronym meaning FLoating point Operations Per Second. The FLOPS is a measure of a computer's computer performance, especially in fields of scientific calculations that make heavy use of floating point calculations, similar to instructions per second....
 and the fastest Itanium 2, at 1.67 GHz, was rated at 6.67 GFLOPS.

Memory architecture

From 2002 to 2006, Itanium 2 processors shared a common cache hierarchy. They had 16 KB
Kilobyte

Kilobyte is a unit of Computer data storage equal to either 1,024 bytes or 1,000 bytes , depending on context.It is abbreviated in a number of ways: KB, kB, K and Kbyte....
  of Level 1 instruction cache and 16 KB of Level 1 data cache. The L2 cache was unified (both instruction and data) and is 256 KB. The Level 3 cache was also unified and varied in size from 1.5 MB
Megabyte

Megabyte is a SI prefix-multiple of the unit byte for digital information computer storage or transmission and is equal to 106 bytes....
 to 24 MB. The 256 KB L2 cache contains sufficient logic to handle semaphore
Semaphore (programming)

In computer science, a semaphore is a protected variable or abstract data type which constitutes the classic method for restricting access to shared resources such as shared memory in a multiprogramming environment....
 operations without disturbing the main arithmetic logic unit
Arithmetic logic unit

In computing, an arithmetic logic unit is a digital circuit that performs arithmetic and logicaloperations. The ALU is a fundamental building block of the central processing unit of a computer, and even the simplest microprocessors contain one for purposes such as maintaining timers....
 (ALU).

Main memory is accessed through a bus
Computer bus

In computer architecture, a bus is a subsystem that transfers data between computer components inside a computer or between computers. Each bus defines its set of connectors to physically plug devices, cards or cables together....
 to an off-chip chipset
Chipset

A chipset or chip set refers to a group of integrated circuits, or chips, that are designed to work together. They are usually marketed as a single product....
. The Itanium 2 bus was initially called the McKinley bus, but is now usually referred to as the Itanium bus. The speed of the bus has increased steadily with new processor releases. The bus transfers 2x128 bits per clock cycle, so the 200 MHz McKinley bus transferred 6.4 GB/s and the 533 MHz Montecito bus transfers 17.056 GB/s.

Architectural changes

Itanium processors released prior to 2006 had hardware support for the IA-32
IA-32

IA-32 , often generically called x86 or x86-32, is the instruction set architecture of Intel's most commercially successful microprocessors....
 architecture to permit support for legacy server applications, but performance for IA-32 code was much worse than for native code and also worse than the performance of contemporaneous x86 processors. In 2005, Intel developed the IA-32 Execution Layer
IA-32 Execution Layer

The IA-32 Execution Layer is a software driver that improves performance of 32-bit applications running on 64-bit Intel Itanium-based systems running Linux and Windows Server 2003 ....
 (IA-32 EL), a software emulator that provides better performance. With Montecito, Intel therefore eliminated hardware support for IA-32 code.

In 2006, with the release of Montecito
Montecito (processor)

Montecito is the code-name of a major release of Intel's Itanium central processing unit Family , which implements the Intel Itanium architecture on a dual-core processor....
, Intel made a number of enhancements to the basic processor architecture including:
  • Hardware Multithreading: Each processor core maintains context for two threads of execution. When one thread stalls during memory access, the other thread can execute. Intel calls this "coarse multithreading" to distinguish it from the "hyperthreading technology" Intel integrated into some x86 and x86-64
    X86-64

    x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities....
     microprocessors. Coarse multithreading is well matched to the Intel Itanium Architecture and results in an appreciable performance gain.
  • Hardware Support for Virtualization
    Virtualization

    In computing, platform virtualization is a virtualization of computers or operating systems. It hides the physical characteristics of computing platform from the users, instead showing another abstract, emulated computing platform....
    : Intel added Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT), which provides hardware assists for core virtualization functions. Virtualization allows a software "hypervisor
    Hypervisor

    A hypervisor, also called virtual machine monitor , is a computer hardware platform virtualization software that allows multiple operating systems to run on a host computer concurrently....
    " to run multiple operating system instances on the processor concurrently.
  • Cache Enhancements: Montecito added a split L2 cache, which included a dedicated 1 MB L2 cache for instructions. The original 256 KB L2 cache was converted to a dedicated data cache. Montecito also included up to 12MB of on-die L3 cache.


Hardware support


Systems

Server manufacturers' Itanium products
Companylatest product
name from to nameCPUs
Compaq
Compaq

Compaq Computer Corporation was an United States personal computer company founded in 1982, and is now a brand name of Hewlett-Packard Company....
 
2001 2001 Proliant
Proliant

Proliant is a brand of server computers that was originally developed and marketed by Compaq. Proliant systems were one of the first x86 servers to be sold in a rack mount configuration, and have lead the market in sales since introduction....
 590
1-4
IBM
IBM

International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue" , is a multinational corporation computer technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, New York, United States....
 
2001 2005 x455 1-16
Dell
Dell

Dell, Inc. is a multinational corporation technology corporation that develops, manufactures, sells, and supports personal computers and other computer-related products....
 
2001 2005 PowerEdge 7250 1-4
Unisys
Unisys

Unisys Corporation , based in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware, is a global provider of information technology services and programs....
 
2002 2009ES7000
ES7000

The ES7000 is Unisys's x86/Microsoft Windows, Linux and Solaris -based server product line. The "ES7000" brand has been used since 1999, although variants and models within the family support various processor and bus architectures....
/one
1-32
HP
Hewlett-Packard

The Hewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States....
 
2001 now Integrity
HP Integrity

On June 30, 2003, Hewlett Packard rebranded the HP 9000 Itanium 2 servers as HP Integrity. The Integrity brand name was inherited by HP from Tandem Computers via Compaq....
 
1-128
SGI
Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a company manufacturer high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and computer software. SGI was founded by James H....
 
2001 now Altix
Altix

Altix is Silicon Graphics' line of servers and supercomputers based on Intel central processing unit. The line was first announced in January 2003, with the Altix 3000 offering Intel Itanium 2 running Red Hat Enterprise Linux or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with SGI ProPack....
 4000
1-2048
Hitachi
Hitachi, Ltd.

is a multinational corporation specializing in high-technology and services headquartered in Marunouchi Itchome, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. The company is the parent of the Hitachi Group as part of the larger DKB Group companies....
 
2001 now BladeSymphony
1000
1-8
Bull
Groupe Bull

Groupe Bull is a France owned computer company headquartered in Les Clayes-sous-Bois, outside Paris. The company has also been known at various times as Bull General Electric, Honeywell Bull, CII Honeywell Bull, and Bull HN....
 
2002 now NovaScale 1-32
NEC
NEC

is a Japan multinational corporation IT company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
 
2002 now Express5800
/1000
1-32
Fujitsu
Fujitsu

is a Japanese company specializing in semiconductors, air conditioners, computers , telecommunications, and Service , and is headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Tokyo....
 
2005 now PRIMEQUEST 1-32
As of 2009, several manufacturers offer Itanium systems, including HP
Hewlett-Packard

The Hewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States....
, SGI
Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a company manufacturer high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and computer software. SGI was founded by James H....
, NEC
NEC

is a Japan multinational corporation IT company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
, Fujitsu
Fujitsu

is a Japanese company specializing in semiconductors, air conditioners, computers , telecommunications, and Service , and is headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Tokyo....
, Hitachi
Hitachi, Ltd.

is a multinational corporation specializing in high-technology and services headquartered in Marunouchi Itchome, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. The company is the parent of the Hitachi Group as part of the larger DKB Group companies....
, and Groupe Bull
Groupe Bull

Groupe Bull is a France owned computer company headquartered in Les Clayes-sous-Bois, outside Paris. The company has also been known at various times as Bull General Electric, Honeywell Bull, CII Honeywell Bull, and Bull HN....
. In addition, Intel offers a chassis that can be used by system integrator
System integrator

A system integrator is a person or company that specializes in bringing together component subsystems into a whole and ensuring that those subsystems function together, a practice known as System integration....
s to build Itanium systems. HP, the only one of the industry's top four server manufacturers to offer Itanium-based systems today, manufactures at least 80% of all Itanium systems. HP sold 7200 systems in the first quarter of 2006. The bulk of systems sold are enterprise server
Enterprise server

An enterprise server is a computer system which performs an essential service for a large organization. Examples include corporate World Wide Web Server s, Computer printer servers, and databases....
s and machines for large-scale technical computing, with an average selling price per system in excess of US$
United States dollar

The United States dollar is the unit of currency of the United States and was defined by the Coinage Act of 1792 to be between 371 and 416 grains of silver ....
200,000. A typical system uses eight or more Itanium processors.

Chipsets

The Itanium bus interfaces to the rest of the system via a chipset
Chipset

A chipset or chip set refers to a group of integrated circuits, or chips, that are designed to work together. They are usually marketed as a single product....
. Enterprise server manufacturers differentiate their systems by designing and developing chipsets that interface the processor to memory, interconnections, and peripheral controllers. The chipset is the heart of the system-level architecture for each system design. Development of a chipset costs tens of millions of dollars and represents a major commitment to the use of the Itanium. IBM created a chipset in 2003, and Intel in 2002, but neither of them has developed chipsets to support newer technologies such as DDR2
DDR2 SDRAM

DDR2 SDRAM or Double Data Rate two synchronous dynamic random access memory is a random access memory technology used in electronic engineering for high bandwidth storage of the working data of a computer or other digital electronics device....
 or PCI Express
PCI Express

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI Local Bus, PCI-X, and Accelerated Graphics Port standards....
. Currently, modern chipsets for Itanium supporting such technologies are manufactured by HP, Fujitsu, SGI, NEC, and Hitachi.

The upcoming Itanium processor (Tukwila) has been designed to share a common chipset with the Intel Xeon processor EX (Intel’s Xeon processor designed for four processor and larger servers). The goal is to provide system development and cost-saving synergies for server OEMs, many of whom develop both Itanium- and Xeon-based servers.

Software support

In order to allow more software to run on the Itanium, Intel supported the development of effective compilers for its platform, especially its own suite of compilers. GCC
GNU Compiler Collection

The GNU Compiler Collection is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain....
, Open64
Open64

Open64 is an open source, optimizing compiler for the Intel IA-64 , AMD Opteron and Intel IA-32e architecture. It derives from the Silicon Graphics compilers for the MIPS R10000 processor, called MIPSPro....
 and MS Visual Studio 2005 (and later)
Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment from Microsoft. It can be used to develop Console application and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft W...
 are also able to produce machine code for Itanium. As of 2008, Itanium is supported by Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003

Windows Server 2003 is a Server operating system produced by Microsoft. Introduced on 24 April 2003 as the successor to Windows 2000 Server, it is considered by Microsoft to be the cornerstone of its Windows Server System line of business server products....
 and Windows Server 2008, multiple Linux distributions (including Debian
Debian

Debian GNU/Linux is one of the most popular and influential computer operating systems composed of free software and open source software....
, Gentoo
Gentoo

Gentoo may refer to:* Gentoo penguin, a species of bird* Gentoo Linux, a computer operating system distribution* Gentoo/FreeBSD, a port of Gentoo Linux to the FreeBSD kernel and userland...
, Red Hat
Red Hat

In computing, Red Hat, Inc. is a company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1995, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....
 and Novell SuSE
Suse

Suse may refer to:*SUSE Linux distributions*Sus, Azerbaijan...
), FreeBSD
FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a Unix-like free software operating system descended from AT&T Unix via the Berkeley Software Distribution branch through the 386BSD and Berkeley Software Distribution#4.4BSD and descendants operating systems....
, and HP-UX
HP-UX

HP-UX 11i is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary software implementation of the Unix operating system, based on UNIX System V . It runs on the HP 9000 PA-RISC-based range of central processing unit and HP Integrity Intel's Itanium-based systems, and was also available for later Apollo/Domain systems....
, OpenVMS
OpenVMS

OpenVMS , previously known as VAX-11/VMS, VAX/VMS or VMS, is the name of a high-end computer server operating system that runs on the VAX and DEC Alpha families of computers, developed by Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts, Massachusetts , and most recently on Hewlett-Packard systems built around the In...
, and NonStop
Nonstop

Nonstop are a Portugal girl group, created out of the television reality show Popstars, in 2001. They are also the oldest Popstars group in activity....
 from HP, all natively. HP also sells a virtualization
Virtualization

In computing, platform virtualization is a virtualization of computers or operating systems. It hides the physical characteristics of computing platform from the users, instead showing another abstract, emulated computing platform....
 technology for Itanium called Integrity Virtual Machines. Itanium also supports mainframe environment GCOS
General Comprehensive Operating System

GCOS is a family of operating systems oriented toward mainframe computers.The original version of GCOS was developed by General Electric from 1962; originally called GECOS ....
 from Groupe Bull and several IA-32
IA-32

IA-32 , often generically called x86 or x86-32, is the instruction set architecture of Intel's most commercially successful microprocessors....
 operating systems via Instruction Set Simulator
Instruction Set Simulator

An instruction set simulator is a simulation model , usually coded in a high-level programming language, which mimics the behavior of a mainframe or microprocessor by "reading" instructions and maintaining internal variables which represent the processor's registers....
s. Using QuickTransit
QuickTransit

QuickTransit is cross-platform virtualization software developed by Transitive Corporation. It allows software compiled for one specific central processing unit and operating system combination to be executed on a different processor and/or operating system architecture without source code or binary changes....
, application binary software for IRIX
IRIX

IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers....
/MIPS
MIPS architecture

MIPS is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . In the mid to late 1990s, it was estimated that one in three RISC microprocessors produced were MIPS implementations....
 and Solaris
Solaris Operating System

Solaris is a Unix-based operating system introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1992 as the successor to SunOS.Solaris is known for its scalability, especially on SPARC systems, and for originating many innovative features such as DTrace and ZFS....
/SPARC
SPARC

SPARC is a Reduced Instruction Set Computer microprocessor instruction set Computer architecture originally designed in 1985 by Sun Microsystems....
 can run via "dynamic binary translation" on Linux/Itanium. According to the Itanium Solutions Alliance, as of early 2008, over 13,000 applications are available for Itanium based systems, though Sun has contested Itanium application counts in the past. The ISA also supports Gelato
Gelato Federation

The Gelato Federation is a "global technical community dedicated to advancing Linux on the Intel Itanium platform through collaboration, education, and leadership." Formed in 2001, membership includes more than seventy academic and research organizations around the world, including several that operate Itanium-based supercomputers on the Top...
, an Itanium HPC user group and developer community that ports and supports open source
Open source

Open source is an approach to design, development, and distribution offering practical accessibility to a product's source . Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical Strategy element of their business operations....
 software for Itanium.

The software requirements for Itanium were criticized by Donald Knuth
Donald Knuth

Donald Ervin Knuth is a renowned computer science and Emeritus of the Art of Computer Programming at Stanford University.Author of the seminal multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming , Knuth has been called the "father" of the run-time analysis, contributing to the development of, and systematizing formal mathematical techn...
 who said: "... The Itanium approach ... was supposed to be so terrific—until it turned out that the wished-for compilers were basically impossible to write" .

Competition

The Itanium 2 competes in the enterprise server
Enterprise server

An enterprise server is a computer system which performs an essential service for a large organization. Examples include corporate World Wide Web Server s, Computer printer servers, and databases....
 and high-performance computing
High-performance computing

High-performance computing uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers....
 (HPC) markets. Itanium's major competitors include Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational corporation vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982....
' UltraSPARC IV+
UltraSPARC IV+

The UltraSPARC IV and follow-up UltraSPARC IV+ are microprocessors designed by Sun Microsystems and manufacturered by Texas Instruments. They are the fourth and fifth generation of the UltraSPARC microprocessor family, implementing the 64-bit SPARC V9 instruction architecure....
, Fujitsu
Fujitsu

is a Japanese company specializing in semiconductors, air conditioners, computers , telecommunications, and Service , and is headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Tokyo....
's SPARC64, IBM
IBM

International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue" , is a multinational corporation computer technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, New York, United States....
's POWER6
POWER6

The POWER6 microprocessor is IBM's follow-on to the POWER5. It is part of the eCLipz, said to have a goal of converging IBM's server hardware where practical ....
, AMD's Opteron
Opteron

The Opteron is Advanced Micro Devices's x86 server Central processing unit line, and was the first processor to implement the AMD64 instruction set architecture ....
, and Intel's own Xeon
Xeon

The Xeon brand refers to many families of Intel Corporation's x86 architecture multiprocessing Central processing units ? for dual processor and multi-processor configuration on a single motherboard targeted at non-consumer markets of server and workstation computers, and also at blade servers and embedded systems....
 servers.

Throughout its history, Itanium has had the best floating point performance relative to fixed-point performance of any general-purpose microprocessor. This capability is useful in HPC
High-performance computing

High-performance computing uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers....
 systems but is not needed for most enterprise server workloads.

By 2005, Itanium systems accounted for about 14% of HPC systems revenue, but the percentage has declined as the industry shifts to x86-64 clusters for this application.

According to Gartner, "...the future roadmap for Itanium looks as strong as that of any RISC peer like Power or SPARC."

Supercomputers and high-performance computing

An Itanium-based computer first appeared on list of the TOP500
TOP500

The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year....
 supercomputers in November 2001. The best position ever achieved by an Itanium 2 based system in the list was #2, achieved in June 2004, when Thunder (LLNL) entered the list with an Rmax of 19.94 Teraflops. In November 2004, Columbia
Columbia (supercomputer)

Named in honor of the crew who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, Columbia is a supercomputer built by Silicon Graphics for NASA. Its main purpose was to simulate the violent collision and merger of spiral galaxies that lead to the formation of elliptical galaxies....
 entered the list at #2 with 51.8 Teraflops, and there was at least one Itanium-based computer in the top 10 from then until June 2007. The peak number of Itanium-based machines on the list occurred in the November 2004 list, at 84 systems (16.8%); by November 2008, this had dropped to nine systems (1.8%).

New Itanium implementations in high performance computing (HPC) are primarily for research areas (such as biochemical research) where typical workloads perform better on large, shared memory systems rather than distributed clusters. These systems typically have 16 to 64 processors, and are not comparable in size to the supercomputers on the TOP500 list.

Processors


Released processors

The Itanium processors show a steady progression in capability. Merced was a proof of concept. McKinley dramatically improved the memory hierarchy and allowed Itanium to become reasonably competitive. Madison, with the shift to a 130 nm process, allowed for enough cache space to overcome the major performance bottlenecks. Montecito, with a 90 nm process, allowed for a dual-core implementation and a major improvement in performance per watt. Montvale added three new features: core-level lockstep, demand-based switching and front-side bus frequency of up to 667 MHz.

130 nm
130 nanometer

The 130 Metre#SI_prefixed_forms_of_metre process refers to the level of semiconductor process technology that was reached in the 2000-2001 timeframe, by most leading semiconductor companies, like Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM, and TSMC....
 >
130 nm
130 nanometer

The 130 Metre#SI_prefixed_forms_of_metre process refers to the level of semiconductor process technology that was reached in the 2000-2001 timeframe, by most leading semiconductor companies, like Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM, and TSMC....
 >
Codename
List of Intel codenames

Intel has historically named integrated circuit development projects after geographical names of towns, rivers or mountains near the location of the Intel facility responsible for the IC....

process
released Clock L2 Cache
Cache

In computer science, a cache is a collection of data duplicating original values stored elsewhere or computed earlier, where the original data is expensive to fetch or to compute, compared to the cost of reading the cache....
/
core
L3 Cache
Cache

In computer science, a cache is a collection of data duplicating original values stored elsewhere or computed earlier, where the original data is expensive to fetch or to compute, compared to the cost of reading the cache....
/
core
Bus
Front side bus

In personal computers, the Front Side Bus is the bus that carries data between the central processing unit and the Northbridge .Depending on the processor used, some computers may also have a back side bus that connects the CPU to the CPU cache....
 
dies
Die (integrated circuit)

A die in the context of integrated circuits is a small block of semiconducting material, on which a given functional circuit is fabricated.Typically, integrated circuits are produced in large batches on a single wafer of electronic-grade silicon through processes such as photolithography....
/
device
cores/
die
Die (integrated circuit)

A die in the context of integrated circuits is a small block of semiconducting material, on which a given functional circuit is fabricated.Typically, integrated circuits are produced in large batches on a single wafer of electronic-grade silicon through processes such as photolithography....
 
watt
WATT

WATT is a radio station broadcasting a News radio-Talk radio-Sports radio format. Licensed to Cadillac, Michigan, it first began broadcasting in 1945....
s/
device
comments
Itanium
Merced
180 nm
180 nanometer

The 180 nanometre process refers to the level of semiconductor process technology that was reached in the 1999-2000 timeframe, by most leading semiconductor companies, like Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM, and TSMC....
 
2001-06 733 MHz 96 KB none 266 MHz111162MB off-die L3 cache
none 130 4MB off-die L3 cache
Itanium 2
McKinley
180 nm
180 nanometer

The 180 nanometre process refers to the level of semiconductor process technology that was reached in the 1999-2000 timeframe, by most leading semiconductor companies, like Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM, and TSMC....
 
2002-07-08 900 MHz 256 KB 1.5 MB 400 MHz11130 HW branchlong
3 MB 130
Madison
130 nm
130 nanometer

The 130 Metre#SI_prefixed_forms_of_metre process refers to the level of semiconductor process technology that was reached in the 2000-2001 timeframe, by most leading semiconductor companies, like Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM, and TSMC....
 
2003-06-301.3 GHz 3 MB 130 
4 MB 130 
6 MB 130 
1.4 GHz 1.5 MB 130 
1.4 GHz 3 MB 130 
3 MB 130 
2003-09-081.0 GHz 1.5 MB 62Low voltage
2004-Q11.1 GHz 4 MB 400 MHz2126032 MB L4
Fanwood
130 nm
130 nanometer

The 130 Metre#SI_prefixed_forms_of_metre process refers to the level of semiconductor process technology that was reached in the 2000-2001 timeframe, by most leading semiconductor companies, like Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM, and TSMC....
 
2004-11-081.6 GHz 3 MB 533 MHz11130 
3 MB 400 MHz62?Low voltage
Madison 9M
130 nm
130 nanometer

The 130 Metre#SI_prefixed_forms_of_metre process refers to the level of semiconductor process technology that was reached in the 2000-2001 timeframe, by most leading semiconductor companies, like Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM, and TSMC....
 
2004-11-081.6 GHz 9 MB 400 MHz130 
1.67 GHz 6 MB 667 MHz130 
1.67 GHz 9 MB 667 MHz130 
Montecito
90 nm
90 nanometer

The 90 Metre#SI prefixed forms of metre process refers to the level of CMOS process technology that was reached in the 2002-2003 timeframe, by most leading semiconductor companies, like Intel, AMD, Infineon, Texas Instruments, IBM, and TSMC....
 
2006-07-181.4 GHz 256 KB+
1 MB
12 MB 400 MHz12104Virtualization,
Multithread,
no HW IA-32
12 MB 533 MHz12104
Montvale
90 nm
90 nanometer

The 90 Metre#SI prefixed forms of metre process refers to the level of CMOS process technology that was reached in the 2002-2003 timeframe, by most leading semiconductor companies, like Intel, AMD, Infineon, Texas Instruments, IBM, and TSMC....
 
2007-10-311.66 GHz 4-18 MB 400-667 MHz11-275-104Core-level lockstep,
demand-based switching


Future processors

, some information is known for the following:
  • Tukwila
    Tukwila (processor)

    Tukwila is the code-name for a future generation of Intel's Itanium processor family following Itanium 2 and Montecito . It was expected to come to market in late 2008....
     was originally planned for release in 2007, but was delayed several times. In February 2009 Intel announced a delay to allow an enhancement to the memory controllers. The device will use a 65 nm process, include four cores, 30 MB on-die caches, Hyper-Threading technology and integrated memory controllers, It will implement double-device data correction, which helps to fix memory errors. Tukwila will also implement Intel QuickPath Interconnect to replace the Itanium bus-based architecture. It will have a peak interprocessor bandwidth of 96 GB/s and a peak memory bandwidth of 34 GB/s. With Quickpath, the processor has integrated memory controllers and interfaces the memory directly, and uses QPI interfaces to directly connect to other processors and IO Hubs. QuickPath is also used on Intel processors using the Nehalem architecture, so Tukwila will probably be able to use chipsets used by Nehalem. Tukwila will incorporate four memory controllers, each of which supports multiple DDR3
    DDR3 SDRAM

    In electronic engineering, DDR3 SDRAM or Double data rate three synchronous dynamic random access memory is a random access memory interface technology used for high bandwidth storage of the working data of a computer or other digital electronics devices....
     DIMM
    DIMM

    A DIMM, or dual in-line memory module, comprises a series of dynamic random access memory integrated circuits. These modules are mounted on a printed circuit board and designed for use in personal computers, workstations and Server s....
    s via a separate memory controller , much like the upcoming Nehalem-based Xeon processor, code name Beckton.
  • Poulson will be the follow-on processor to Tukwila. It will use a 32 nm
    32 nanometer

    The 32 nanometre process is the next step after the 45 nanometer process in complementary metal?oxide?semiconductor manufacturing and fabrication....
     silicon process technology and will feature four or more cores, multithreading enhancements, and new instructions to take advantage of parallelism, especially in virtualization. It is due around 2010.


  • Kittson will follow Poulson. Few details are known other than the existence of the codename.


Timeline

  • 1989:
    • HP begins investigating EPIC
  • 1994:
    • June: HP and Intel announce partnership
  • 1995:
    • September: HP, Novell, and SCO announce plans for a "high volume UNIX operating system" to deliver "64-bit networked computing on the HP/Intel architecture"
  • 1996:
    • October: Compaq
      Compaq

      Compaq Computer Corporation was an United States personal computer company founded in 1982, and is now a brand name of Hewlett-Packard Company....
       announces it will use IA-64
  • 1997:
    • June: IDC
      International Data Corporation

      International Data Corporation is a market research and analysis firm specializing in information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology....
       predicts IA-64 systems sales will reach $38bn/yr by 2001
    • October: Dell
      Dell

      Dell, Inc. is a multinational corporation technology corporation that develops, manufactures, sells, and supports personal computers and other computer-related products....
       announces it will use IA-64
    • December: Intel and Sun announce joint effort to port Solaris to IA-64
  • 1998:
    • March: SCO admits HP/SCO Unix alliance
      3DA

      3DA was an alliance formed between The Santa Cruz Operation and Hewlett Packard in September 1995. Its purpose was to unify SCO's OpenServer product, UnixWare , and HP-UX from HP; the resulting product would then become the de facto Unix standard for both existing x86 systems and the upcoming IA-64 processor architecture from Intel....
       is now dead
    • June: IDC predicts IA-64 systems sales will reach $30bn/yr by 2001
    • June: Intel announces Merced will be delayed, from second half of 1999 to first half of 2000
    • September: IBM announces it will build Merced-based machines
    • October: Project Monterey
      Project Monterey

      Project Monterey was an attempt to build a single Unix operating system that ran across a variety of 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, as well as supporting multi-processing....
       is formed to create a common UNIX
      Unix

      Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
       for IA-64
  • 1999:
    • February: Project Trillian
      Project Trillian

      Project Trillian was an effort by an industry consortium to port the Linux operating system to the Itanium processor. The project started in May 1999 with the goal of releasing the distribution in time for the initial release of Itanium, then scheduled for early 2000....
       is formed to port Linux
      Linux

      Linux is a generic term referring to Unix-like computer operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Their development is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed by anyone under the terms of the GNU GPL license...
       to IA-64
    • August: IDC predicts IA-64 systems sales will reach $25bn/yr by 2002
    • October: Intel Announces the Itanium name
    • October: the term Itanic is first used
  • 2000:
    • February: Project Trillian
      Project Trillian

      Project Trillian was an effort by an industry consortium to port the Linux operating system to the Itanium processor. The project started in May 1999 with the goal of releasing the distribution in time for the initial release of Itanium, then scheduled for early 2000....
       delivers source code
    • June: IDC predicts Itanium systems sales will reach $25bn/yr by 2003
    • July: Sun and Intel drop Solaris-on-Itanium plans
    • August: AMD releases specification for x86-64
      X86-64

      x86-64 is a superset of the x86. x86-64 Central processing units can run existing 32-bit or 16-bit x86 programs at full speed, but also support new programs written with a 64-bit address space and other additional capabilities....
      , a set of 64-bit extensions to Intel's own x86 architecture intended to compete with IA-64. It will eventually market this under the name "AMD64"
  • 2001:
    • June: IDC predicts Itanium systems sales will reach $15bn/yr by 2004
    • June: Project Monterey
      Project Monterey

      Project Monterey was an attempt to build a single Unix operating system that ran across a variety of 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, as well as supporting multi-processing....
       dies
    • July: Itanium is released
    • October: IDC predicts Itanium systems sales will reach $12bn/yr by the end of 2004
    • November: IBM's 320-processor Titan NOW Cluster at National Center for Supercomputing Applications
      National Center for Supercomputing Applications

      The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is a state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering....
       is listed on the TOP500
      TOP500

      The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year....
       list at position #34
    • November: Compaq delays Itanium Product release due to problems with processor
    • December: Gelato
      Gelato Federation

      The Gelato Federation is a "global technical community dedicated to advancing Linux on the Intel Itanium platform through collaboration, education, and leadership." Formed in 2001, membership includes more than seventy academic and research organizations around the world, including several that operate Itanium-based supercomputers on the Top...
       is formed
  • 2002:
    • March: IDC predicts Itanium systems sales will reach $5bn/yr by end 2004
    • June:Itanium 2 is released
  • 2003:
    • April: IDC predicts Itanium systems sales will reach $9bn/yr by end 2007
    • April: AMD releases Opteron
      Opteron

      The Opteron is Advanced Micro Devices's x86 server Central processing unit line, and was the first processor to implement the AMD64 instruction set architecture ....
      , the first processor with x86-64 extensions
    • June: Intel releases the "Madison" Itanium 2
  • 2004:
    • February: Intel announces it has been working on its own x86-64 implementation (which it will eventually market under the name "Intel 64")
    • June: Intel releases its first processor with x86-64 extensions, a Xeon
      Xeon

      The Xeon brand refers to many families of Intel Corporation's x86 architecture multiprocessing Central processing units ? for dual processor and multi-processor configuration on a single motherboard targeted at non-consumer markets of server and workstation computers, and also at blade servers and embedded systems....
       processor codenamed "Nocona"
    • June: Thunder, a system at LLNL
      Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

      The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California is a scientific research laboratory founded by the University of California in 1952....
       with 4096 Itanium 2 processors, is listed on the TOP500
      TOP500

      The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year....
       list at position #2
    • November: Columbia
      Columbia (supercomputer)

      Named in honor of the crew who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, Columbia is a supercomputer built by Silicon Graphics for NASA. Its main purpose was to simulate the violent collision and merger of spiral galaxies that lead to the formation of elliptical galaxies....
      , an SGI
      Silicon Graphics

      Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a company manufacturer high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and computer software. SGI was founded by James H....
       Altix
      Altix

      Altix is Silicon Graphics' line of servers and supercomputers based on Intel central processing unit. The line was first announced in January 2003, with the Altix 3000 offering Intel Itanium 2 running Red Hat Enterprise Linux or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with SGI ProPack....
       3700 with 10160 Itanium 2 processors at NASA Ames Research Center, is listed on the TOP500
      TOP500

      The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year....
       list at position #2.
    • December: Itanium system sales for 2004 reach $1.4bn
  • 2005:
    • January: HP ports OpenVMS
      OpenVMS

      OpenVMS , previously known as VAX-11/VMS, VAX/VMS or VMS, is the name of a high-end computer server operating system that runs on the VAX and DEC Alpha families of computers, developed by Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts, Massachusetts , and most recently on Hewlett-Packard systems built around the In...
       to Itanium
    • February: IBM server design drops Itanium support
    • June: An Itanium 2 sets a record SPECfp
      SPECfp

      SPECfp is a computer benchmark designed to test the floating point performance of a computer. It is managed by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation....
      2000 result of 2,801 in a Hitachi, Ltd.
      Hitachi, Ltd.

      is a multinational corporation specializing in high-technology and services headquartered in Marunouchi Itchome, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. The company is the parent of the Hitachi Group as part of the larger DKB Group companies....
       Computing blade.
    • September: Itanium Solutions Alliance is formed
    • September: Dell exits the Itanium business
    • October: Itanium server sales reach $619M/quarter in the third quarter.
    • October: Intel announces one-year delays for Montecito, Montvale, and Tukwila
  • 2006:
    • January: Itanium Solutions Alliance announces a $10bn collective investment in Itanium by 2010
    • February: IDC predicts Itanium systems sales will reach $6.6bn/yr by 2009
    • June: Intel releases the dual-core "Montecito
      Montecito (processor)

      Montecito is the code-name of a major release of Intel's Itanium central processing unit Family , which implements the Intel Itanium architecture on a dual-core processor....
      " Itanium 2
  • 2007:
    • October: Intel releases the "Montvale" Itanium 2
    • November: Intel renames the family back to Itanium.


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