Microsoft says RIP to Itanium

BANGALORE, INDIA: Barely a few days after Intel and AMD announced the launch of new high-end x86 chips that drive the architecture higher up the server chain, Microsoft has announced a phasing out of support for Intel's Itanium chip in their server software.

In his Windows Server blog, Dan Reger, a Microsoft senior technical product manager said, “Windows Server 2008 R2 will be the last version of Windows Server to support the Intel Itanium architecture.  SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010 are also the last versions to support Itanium.”

As a response to possible reactions from existing customers, Microsoft has stated that current support for Itanium remains unchanged.  “Each of these products represent the state of the art of their respective product lines.  Each fully support Itanium, support the recently-released Itanium 9300 (“Tukwila”) processor, and Microsoft’s support for these products will continue – following the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy”. Dan said in his blog.

Microsoft justifies that the decision lies in the 'natural evolution of the x86 64-bit (“x64”) architecture has led to the creation of processors and servers which deliver the scalability and reliability needed for today’s mission-critical workloads'.

The company also claims that Windows Server 2008 R2 was originally designed to support the business-critical capabilities these processors and servers make available.  It supports up to 256 logical processors (cores or hyper-threading units), so it’s ready for the ever-increasing number of cores.