Itanium® Architecture for Programmers: Understanding 64-Bit Processors and EPIC Principles

13.2. How Implementations Change

While this book does not treat matters of hardware organization in any detail, our readers should pick up some awareness of the sorts of implementation differences that the Itanium, or any other, architecture may come to have over time. Major issues include technological feasibility, overall system performance, cost, and heat dissipation. The best technology does not always win, however. Favorable perceptions by opinion-makers, market acceptance, and the activities of competitors are also important influences.

As chip fabrication techniques are progressively refined to ever-smaller feature sizes, a given chip area can then be developed into more transistors. New implementations can use additional transistors in ...