Itanium 2

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The Itanium 2 was released in 2002, and was marketed for enterprise servers rather than for the whole gamut of high-end computing. The initial Itanium 2 was codenamed McKinley. McKinley used a 180 nm process, but it relieved many of the performance problems of the original Itanium.[13]

In 2003, AMD released the Opteron, which implemented its x86-64 64-bit architecture. Opteron gained rapid acceptance in the enterprise server space because it provided an easy upgrade from x86. Intel responded by implementing x86-64 in its Xeon microprocessors in 2004.[14] Intel released a new Itanium 2 family member, codenamed Madison, in 2003. Madison used a 130 nm process and was the basis of all new Itaniums until Montecito was released in June 2006.

In March, 2005, Intel announced that it was working on a new Itanium device, codenamed Tukwila, to be released in 2007. Tukwila would have four processors and would replace the Itanium bus with a new Common System Interface, which would also be used by a new Xeon.[15] Intel later said that Tukwila would be delivered in late 2008.[16]

In November 2005, the major Itanium server manufacturers joined with Intel and a number of software vendors to form the Itanium Solutions Alliance to promote the architecture and accelerate software porting.[17] The Alliance announced that its members would invest $10 Billion in Itanium solutions by the end of the decade.[18]