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ItaniumIn computing, the Itanium is an IA-64 microprocessor developed jointly by Hewlett-Packard and Intel. The first version, code named Merced, shipped in June 2001. Manufactured in a 180 nm process, it was offered at speeds of 733 and 800MHz, with a choice of 2MB or 4MB off-die L3 cache. Prices ranged from US$1200 to over US$4000. However, performance was disappointing. In IA-64 mode, it performed only slightly better than an equivalently clocked x86 design, and when running x86 code, performance was extremely poor, about 1/8th that of an similarly clocked x86 processor. The main (though by no means only) problem with the Itanium was that the latency of its third-level cache was extremely high, which resulted in the amount of usable memory bandwidth being greatly reduced. Clock speeds were also disappointing, relative to the GHz speeds being delivered by the Athlon architecture of the period. Originally Merced had been intended as a new high performance server architecture, to replace Intel's Xeon line of processors. As a proprietary architecture (not derived from x86), AMD would not be able to clone it. Over time, there was even an aspiration it might transition to high end desktops. However the early performance issues and repeated project delays, meant the architecture missed its best chance to gain market share. It was succeeded by the Itanium 2.
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