From Merced To Itanium
Although there has been some confusion and controversy over Intel's long awaited Merced CPU, the name is no longer a mystery. Intel introduced the new Itanium brand name for the first implementation of the Intel Architecture-64 (IA-64) CPU family. IA-64 is the result of HP's and Intel's four-year colloboration on the Explicitly Parallel Instruction Set Computing(EPIC)chip architecture.
First engineering samples of Intel’s Itanium processor have been delivered to Intel customers, with the processor on schedule for production in mid-2000. Itanium processor-based servers and workstations will be available in the second half of the year 2000.