Highly Parallel Architecture
The highly parallel architecture of the Itanium architecture allows the processor to get more things done during each 'clock cycle'. There are typically two ways to speed up the performance of a processor. The one that the general public understands and follows is to increase the 'clock speed' of a processor. For years, this has been the initial benchmark as to how to measure the speed of a chip—a 500Mhz Pentium versus a 200Mhz Cyrix chip, for example.
Members of the Itanium processor family will have a clock speed of one gigahertz and greater. Of course, we're all excited about being able to hasten the clock speed to such a degree. Increasing the clock rate will improve performance, but the processor is still bound ...
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