When first released in 2001, Itanium's speed was disappointing compared to other processor types.
Using existing x86 applications and operating systems was especially bad, with one test in 2001 showing that it was as fast as a 100 MHz Pentium (1.1 GHz Pentiums were on the market at that time).

Itanium did not have success compared to IA-32 or RISC, and was even worse when x86-64 was released, which worked with older x86 applications.

In an article from 2009 about the history of Itanium — "How the Itanium Killed the Computer Industry" — journalist John C. Dvorak reported "This continues to be one of the great fiascos [bad situations] of the last 50 years" .
Technology writer Ashlee Vance wrote that slowness in speed and release "turned the product into a joke in the chip industry."
In an interview, Donald Knuth said "The Itanium approach...was supposed to be so terrific—until it turned out that the wished-for compilers were basically impossible to write."

Both Red Hat and Microsoft said that they would stop allowing Itanium to be used with their operating systems.
However, other Linux distributions such as Gentoo and Debian are still available for Itanium.
On March 22, 2011, Oracle said they would no longer support Itanium, but support for their existing products would continue.
In October 2013, Oracle said they would release Oracle Database 12.1.0.1.0 on HP-UX Itanium 11.31 by early 2014.

A past Intel company official said that Itanium had become profitable (Able to make a lot of money) for Intel in late 2009.
In 2009 and later, Itanium was mostly used on servers by HP, which made 95% of Itanium servers, so the primary operating system for Itanium was HP-UX.
On March 22, 2011, Intel said they will keep supporting Itanium entirely with many new Itanium chips being created and on-time.
When first released in 2001, Itanium's speed was disappointing compared to other processor types. Using existing x86 applications and operating systems was especially bad, with one test in 2001 showing that it was as fast as a 100 MHz Pentium (1.1 GHz Pentiums were on the market at that time).
Itanium did not have success compared to IA-32 or RISC, and was even worse when x86-64 was released, which worked with older x86 applications.
In an article from 2009 about the history of Itanium — "How the Itanium Killed the Computer Industry" — journalist John C. Dvorak reported "This continues to be one of the great fiascos [bad situations] of the last 50 years" . Technology writer Ashlee Vance wrote that slowness in speed and release "turned the product into a joke in the chip industry." In an interview, Donald Knuth said "The Itanium approach...was supposed to be so terrific—until it turned out that the wished-for compilers were basically impossible to write."
Both Red Hat and Microsoft said that they would stop allowing Itanium to be used with their operating systems. However, other Linux distributions such as Gentoo and Debian are still available for Itanium. On March 22, 2011, Oracle said they would no longer support Itanium, but support for their existing products would continue. In October 2013, Oracle said they would release Oracle Database 12.1.0.1.0 on HP-UX Itanium 11.31 by early 2014.
A past Intel company official said that Itanium had become profitable (Able to make a lot of money) for Intel in late 2009. In 2009 and later, Itanium was mostly used on servers by HP, which made 95% of Itanium servers, so the primary operating system for Itanium was HP-UX. On March 22, 2011, Intel said they will keep supporting Itanium entirely with many new Itanium chips being created and on-time.
Itanium