Command Palette

Search for a command to run...

Product Graveyard
Postmortem2000s

Intel Itanium

64-bit processor architecture designed to replace x86. A decade-long, multibillion-dollar bet on EPIC architecture that the market rejected.

Launched

May 2001

Discontinued

July 2021

Lifespan

20.2 years

Category

hardware

Cause of Death

Outcompeted

A superior competitor captured the market. Signal scores typically decline for 12–24 months before the shutdown announcement.

What Happened

Intel and HP co-designed Itanium as the future of 64-bit computing. AMD instead extended x86 to 64-bit, which Microsoft and Linux adopted. The server market that Itanium was supposed to own went to x86-64 instead. After 20 years and billions in development, the last Itanium shipped in 2021.