Windows XP 2002 for the Itanium: Unbridled rage
A QEMU fork now emulates the original Itanium (Merced) well enough to run Windows XP and Server 2003. The author details building an Itanium cross-compiler on macOS, compiling the firmware, and installing XP after several attempts. The same setup also runs early Windows Server builds, though other OSes like HP-UX remain unsupported.
Don’t you love broken binary compatibility? This is why 80386 is just as relevant in 2026 as it was in 1987.
- sedatk
A historical note: Windows XP 64-bit Edition that was mentioned in the article, was Itanium-specific. It was based on XP kernel while Windows XP x64 Edition (for AMD64 architecture) was based on Windows Server 2003 kernel. Because of that, Windows XP x64 Edition had some significantly different performance characteristics compared to other Windows XP editions. If anything, it was closer to Vista than XP in some aspects.
- tech234a
I wonder if people are able to get Windows Server 2008 R2 to run on this yet as well. That was the last Windows OS to support Itanium, and it received updates until January 14, 2020.
EDIT: there was also an additional patch released in May 2020 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_2008_R2#Itanium
- mghackerlady
I miss itanium. I feel like a madman for saying it, but I do. Something about it is just alluring to me. Alas, the problems were too hard to solve or weren't worth solving anymore
Ironically, it died around the time LLMs/AI started becoming good. I feel like the compiler problems with vliw could be solved to a degree with a purpose built ai
- WarOnPrivacy
XGCJ6-Q6XGJ-BQ2QQ-BRWJ7-67X7W
I used to have this key memorized.
- t1234s
was there any advantage or special use case for running an itanium windows workstation instead of x86 back then?