In computing, the Itanium is an IA-64 microprocessor developed jointly by Hewlett-Packard and Intel.
Merced
The first version, code named Merced, shipped in June 2001. Manufactured in a 180 nm process, it was offered at speeds of 733 and 800 MHz, with a choice of 2 MB or 4 MB off-die L3 cache. Prices ranged from US$1200 to over US$4000. It was succeeded by the Itanium 2.
Additional Information
The original release of Itanium was primarily focused on the technical computing market and was not met with much success. The Itanium 2 processor wasn't released for the commercial market until 2003.
Criticism
The Itanium processors have sold poorly, and have been criticised as slow and expensive. The chip is often referred to as "Itanic."