Don't Wait for Itanium

Itanium. One simple, strange word from Intel about its upcoming processor sparked a new round of hype in the technology industry and throughout the media. Despite the buzz, however, you probably won't see the new chip in PCs for years. The earliest versions, scheduled to ship in mid-2000, will appear mostly in high-end servers and workstations. In time, however, this new technology will change the way people compute.

The Itanium may not run your next PC, but as the company's first Intel Architecture-64 processor, it represents a huge step away from the x86-based architecture of previous and existing Intel processors. The x86 family ranges from the newest Pentium III all the way back to the 8086, introduced in the late 1970s.

The move to a new architecture is coming because over the years Intel has fixed problems and added features to the x86 design, making the chip increasingly complex. Today the x86 is "a really difficult architecture to work with," says Linley Gwennap, editorial director of Microprocessor Report. Gwennap discussed the processor (code-named Merced) at the Microprocessor Forum recently. He calls the x86 design "poorly conceived and overly complex."

A Fresh (64-bit) Start

By creating a brand new chip, Intel and partner Hewlett-Packard start fresh with a new 64-bit architecture. The 64-bit designation means the processor can process data in chunks of 64 bits, unlike today's Pentium III processors (and PC chips from Intel competitors), which process only 32 bits at a time. Some of Intel's competitors in the server space, where Itanium will debut, can already accommodate 64-bit processing, and others are developing 64-bit chips. AMD's recently announced SledgeHammer also offers 64-bit capabilities, but it will rely on current 32-bit architecture.

Itanium's new architecture means the processor should simply work better, says Jim Carlson, director of marketing for IA-64 systems at HP. Designers have traditionally coaxed better performance out of processors by increasing the clock speed, but the new architecture enables chips that can do more at lower speeds.

"By doing this at the fundamental architecture level you're a little ahead," Carlson says. Later, as IA-64 chip speeds increase, even better performance will result.