Itanium, the Second (PCGH Retro, July 8)

… 2002: It was one of the most expensive projects in computer history, came onto the market much too late and still fell short of all expectations: Intel’s Itanium processor with the IA-64 architecture, a thoroughbred 64-bit technology. Not only was the (software emulated) execution of older x86 code too slow on the chip, the new server processor also suffered from low memory bandwidth and low clock frequency. Intel is trying to fix the biggest problems of the first Itanium with a Merced core this July 8th: with the Itanium 2. The processor, codenamed McKinley, integrates 3 MiByte L3 cache and thus grows to 220 million transistors, all three cache levels work now with lower latencies; the frontside bus is widened to 128 bits, which increases the memory bandwidth. Also, the second Itanium x86 code runs faster than the original. But the Itanium is still not the performance miracle we had hoped for, and the old x86 architecture continues to dominate the server market. This architecture has meanwhile been extended to modern 64-bit – by AMD.