Itanium is a family of 64-bit instruction set architectures developed by Intel. Launched in 2001, Itanium was designed for high-performance computing and enterprise servers, focusing on reliability and scalability. It uses a unique architecture called EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing), which allows for advanced parallel processing. Despite its innovative design, Itanium faced challenges in gaining widespread adoption due to compatibility issues with existing software and competition from other architectures like x86. Over the years, Itanium's market share declined, and Intel officially discontinued the Itanium line in 2021, marking the end of its production.