Linus Torvalds accepted in Linux 5.11 kernel branch change that translates the ia64 architecture used in Intel Itanium to the “orphaned” category , which implies the termination of testing. In a commentary on the changes, Linus pointed out that Hewlett Packard Enterprise stopped accepting orders for new Itanium hardware, and Intel did so last year. Itanium processors will officially end in July 2021, but it is unlikely that there are real orders for this hardware.
Itanium processors were introduced by Intel in 2001, but the ia64 architecture did not compete with AMD64, mainly due to the higher performance and smoother transition from 32-bit x86 processors. As a result, Intel’s interests shifted in favor of x86-64 processors, and itanium remained with HP Integrity servers.
The last series of Itanium processors was released in 2017, after which Intel announced that no new series would be released and encouraged customers to switch to Xeon processors. HP-UX 11 will continue to support Itanium processors until the end of 2025, and Windows has already dropped support for Itanium processors (the latter was supported by Windows Server 2008 R2).