Intel's 32-bit on Itanium preview in Windows 2003 SP1
ENT News | at | by Mike
In partnership with Microsoft, Intel will give a customer preview of its 32-bit execution layer for 64-bit Itanium 2 processors in the beta of Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2003. The inability of the Itanium Family processors to run 32-bit applications without a large performance penalty has been a major shortcoming of Intel's 64-bit Itanium line that has negatively affected industry adoption. Applications written for Itanium's new EPIC instruction set have been slow to materialize, and, even when applications are present, budgetary restraints due to economic conditions have kept users from splurging on purchases of a completely new architecture from processors to servers to operating systems to applications.