The Intel Itanium processor family has been architected to provide industry-leading performance and capabilities on high-end applications. To take advantage of the benefits of the Itanium®2 processor, a large and growing number of software applications have been ported to native Itanium architecture code. While optimal performance is realized using native applications, support for IA-32 applications is also provided to enable IT managers flexibility in migrating to Itanium®2-based Solutions:

Itanium 2-based Solutions can be deployed when primary, performance-sensitive applications have been ported to Intel Itanium architecture.

IA-32 versions of secondary applications with less stringent performance requirements can be run on Itanium 2-based platforms. This provides flexibility to IT managers when converting from RISC solutions because they can tap into the broad IA-32 ecosystem.