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

13.3. The Original Itanium Processor

Previous chapters of this book have steadfastly focused on Itanium architecture, with only the occasional clarification about details of implementation, where necessary. As long as the architecture does not change, the material you have learned should remain applicable to new implementations.

We now illustrate the factors influencing the evolution of implementations of computer architectures by comparing features and characteristics of the original Itanium processor to the more widely known Itanium 2 processor.

13.3.1. Comparison to the Itanium 2 Processor

Table 13-1 compares the first Itanium processor and the Itanium 2 processor along several key dimensions. We will not define or discuss every entry in this ...