Microsoft ending support for Itanium

Microsoft is ending its support for Intel's Itanium processor with the current version of its Windows Server OS, according to a Microsoft blog posting Friday.

"Windows Server 2008 R2 will be the last version of Windows Server to support the Intel Itanium architecture," Dan Reger , a Microsoft senior technical product manager, wrote on the Windows Server Division Weblog. "SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010 are also the last versions to support Itanium."

The news will come as a setback for Intel, which has struggled to get its 64-bit Itanium processors more widely used by server makers. It released the latest, quad-core version of Itanium in February after several delays. By that time Red Hat had already announced in January that it would not support Itanium with the next release of its Linux OS distribution.

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