Itanium Rising: Breaking Through Moore's Second Law of Computing Power

Itanium as a New Processor Benchmark

With all the emphasis on bringing together the 'best and brightest' from two design giants, one might think that the process of collaboration was not only the means, but also the end. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. The project that became the Itanium processor was never an academic exercise, and far from being a 'blue sky' corporate myth. Instead, it was an extremely focused, conscious effort to put the brakes on cost and pare back layer upon layer of complexity that had crept into the RISC world. Most importantly, it was to bring value to the corporate purchaser at a level of performance that had never been seen in the IT world before.

To call the Itanium platform a rather big investment on ...