Itanium® Architecture for Programmers

Itanium Workstation and Server Configurations

System hardware or hardware simulators

When Itanium and Itanium 2 processors were first released, a few companies incorporated them in workstation-class systems that saw primary use as software developer office systems. Since then, Itanium 2 processors have been used only in server-class systems. Used equipment dealers may have workstations for sale.

Intel provides a listing of companies offering Itanium-related products.

Ski, a simulator for Itanium (IA-64) architecture is now an open-source project based on original development by Hewlett-Packard. This software runs on x86 Linux systems.

System software

Linux distribution sources

Debian

Gentoo

Red Hat

SuSE (acquired in 2004 by Novell)

See also Linux Online

BSD® Unix ports

FreeBSD for the Itanium architecture is not fully supported (Tier 1), but is presently classified as developmental (Tier 2).

HP-UX port

Hewlett-Packard Company has completed a port of the HP-UX operating system for Itanium processors. This UNIX operating system was first developed for 32-bit and later 64-bit PA-RISC processors.

NonStop port

Hewlett-Packard Company has replaced MIPS processors with Itanium processors in current NonStop products.

OpenVMS® port

Hewlett-Packard Company has completed a port of the OpenVMS operating system for Itanium processors. This operating system was first developed for 32-bit VAX processors and became a 64-bit operating system for Alpha processors (by the former Digital Equipment Corporation).

Intel compilers

Intel Corporation produces compilers that have the same language features for Linux as for Windows.

C++ (also does C and Itanium assembly)
FORTRAN 95 (with some features from FORTRAN 2003)

Intel no-cost items

Divide, Square Root, and Remainder Algorithms for the Itanium Architecture, divsqrt.zip (60 KiB)

Highly Optimized Mathematical Functions for the Itanium Architecture, libm.zip (1.46 MiB)

Optimized String and Memory Functions, str_mem_func2.zip (13.5 KiB)

Hewlett-Packard compilers for HP-UX

Specific links for the compilers mentioned in the book are as follows:

aC++ (also does C and Itanium assembly)
FORTRAN 95

Microsoft products

The Microsoft operating system Windows Server 2003 for Itanium-based Systems exists in Enterprise and Datacenter Editions. The IA-32 Execution Layer (IA-32 EL) Software Driver developed by Intel Corporation is available as a free download. This latter software component provides much better performance than the intrinsic IA-32 compatibility incorporated at the hardware level in early Itanium processors.


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