Intel's New Technology: The Itanium 2

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Itanium 2 processor, microprocessors, high-end enterprise, business intelligence, databases, enterprise resource planning, SCM, computing, computer-aided engineering

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64-Bit computing

In 1994, Intel learnt that HP was working on a 64-bit PA-RISK, which radically improved processing speed. Intel was only making 32-bit chips, but clearly saw the need to make 64-bit chips. Some Intel design teams advocated getting to 64-bit chips by merely extending the existing 32-bit architecture.

Intel has used this logic while moving from 4-bit to 8-bit to 16-bit chips in the 1970s and when going from 16-bit to 32-bit chips in the early 1980s. But for the 64-bit chips, the company decided to work with HP and develop an entirely new architecture. By 1997, Intel & HP had together launched the EPIC design as part of the Itanium processor launch. HP, having developed the new 64-bit architecture along with Intel is placing all its bets on Itanium 2. The fate of Itanium 2 is interlinked with that of HP. Intel and HP took the multi billiondollar expense of creating the 64-bit architecture of the future. A new software base would have to be created for the chips that HP already made, but the switch would also let Intel break free of many of the inherited twists in the "IA" architecture⁴, the design behind other Intel processors.

HP entered an exclusive agreement with Intel to use Itanium 2 by the end of 1994. A computer's speed is defined by how fast it digest the "bits" (The 0s and 1s), which composed all information in the electronic world. A 64-bit computer is significantly better than a 32-bit machine. Pentiums and other processors were 32-bit chips. They read 32 bits with a tick of their internal clock (For instance, the internal clock moved 4.3 billion times a second in a 4.3 gigahertz Pentium). Itanium 2 could read 64 bits. 64-bit chips also facilitated faster information retrieval. They also let a single processor access data from larger amounts of memory, an important consideration for running databases and other large applications. The 32-bit chips, such as the Pentium II, III and 4 and all the existing Xeons from Intel, could juggle only 4GB of memory. 64-bit chips could also handle tremendous amounts of memory. As corporate software evolved, so did the need for 64-bit chips. Intel's ambition is to craft a high-end processor architecture that the entire industry would be forced to use. When Intel finally launched its Itanium 1 in the summer of 2001, it was a failure.

Not only it did not run 32-bit applications in the way Intel planned, but also its performance was not more convincing than a Pentium. In July 2002, Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel, relaunched the project calling it Itanium 2. Itanium 2 contained a 400MHz bus that is 128 bits wide, compared with the 64-bit wide bus on the original Itanium, a change that facilitated greater data transfer rates. In addition, improvements have been made to the compiler; the software that organized and scheduled how different resources on the chip would get deployed. Security is also improved. Like other chips, Itanium 2 could wrap data within varying levels of security. Itanium 2 could hold more data at the highest security levels because of sophisticated data management techniques.

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4] The core architecture for all the processors, IA architecture, is the same. The difference is whether it is built on 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit or 64-bit platforms. All processors provide software compatibility and a huge support infrastructure to the embedded designer.