Itanium Architecture

1
Itanium Architecture

• The History of Intels 32-bit(IA-32) processors.
• Overview of Itanium(IA-64) with respect to
  Intels 32-bit(IA-32) Processors
• Future of the Itanium and IA-32 processors.

2
The History of the Intels 32-bit(IA-32)
Processors.

• 386
• - First 32-bit Intel processor
• - It introduced 32-bit registers for operands and
  addressing
• - Backward compatible
• 486
• - Parallel Execution Capabilities
• - Integrated FPU.
• Pentium
• - Two Execution Pipelines
• - MMX and Level 1 cache.
• Pentium Pro
• - Three Execution Pipelines
• - Introduced the concept of Dynamic Execution
• - Level 2 cache.

3

• Pentium II/PII Xeon
• - No major Architecture improves just larger L1
  and L2 cache sizes.
• Pentium III/PIII Xeon
• - L2 Cache placed on the die to run at same speed
  as processor.
• - Streaming SIMD Extension(SSE) Allows one
  instruction to perform the same function on
  several pieces of data simultaneously.
• Celeron
• - No Architecture improves, just cheaper to
  produce.
• Pentium IV introduces NetBurst Micro-Architecture
• - Rapid Execution Engine
• - Hyper Pipelined Technology
• - Advanced Dynamic Execution
• - New Cache Subsystem

4
Overview of Itanium(IA-64) with respect to
Intels 32-bit(IA-32) Processors

• Integer/Floating Point Registers
• IA-32 has only 8 registers
• IA-64 has 128 registers
• Addressable Memory
• IA-32 32-bit can address up to 4GB of memory.
• IA-64 64-bit can address up to 16TB of memory.
• CISC or Complex Instruction Set Computer (IA-32)
• Large amount of complex Instructions
• Newer CISC processors try to process more than
  one instruction at a time. But to do this they
  have to analyze and re-order instructions.
• EPIC or Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing
  (IA-64)
• Three 41-bit instructions are fetched and
  processed in parallel
• Software can communicate explicitly with the
  processor when operations can be performed in
  parallel.

5
Future of the Itanium(IA-64) and IA-32 processors

• IA-32
• Intel say that IA-32 processors will be around
  for a long time to come. Say the Itanium is
  mainly going to be for high end business and
  scientific computing.
• HP/Intel Grant 2.5 Million In Itanium based
  Systems
• HP and Intel sent 40 universities worldwide
  Itanium Workstations
• TeraGrid
• National Science Foundation(NSF) awarded Intel
  53 million. To build a Distributed Terascale
  Facility(DTF). The Grid will contain 3300 Intel
  Itanium family processors. Which will be capable
  of more than 13.6 trillion calculations per
  second. (13.6 teraflops). It will also have
  access to 450TBs.