Intel to boost Itanium's 32bit performance

An obvious forced move after AMD's Opteron launch yesterday, Intel has announced they are working on an emulator software for Itanium CPUs that will let them run 32-bit applications more effectively than with the hardware implementation already built in the processors.

According to Intel, this new software called the IA-32 Execution Layer and code-named btrans, will give the forthcoming 1.5GHz Itanium 2 the ability to run 32-bit software about as fast as a 1.5GHz Xeon MP, that is, if they meet their target.

There is a small number of successful stories regarding emulators that I can recall, in any case, Intel will continue to push the 64 bit initiative and leaving 32-bit as a secondary part of the Itanium, indeed, Xeons will remain as their preferred choice for 32-bit software while at the same time try to improve one of Itanium's weaknesses.