Intel Itanium (also called IA-64) is a now discontinued high-performance processor architecture based on explicitly parallel instruction computing (EPIC), a form of very long instruction word (VLIW) design. Since its removal from the Linux kernel mainline in 2023, it has been successfully maintained out-of-tree by a small but dedicated community.

This talk explores what it entails to keep Linux on Itanium up to date: motivation (including some background about the architecture itself), infrastructure, organization, and technical challenges involved. We’ll look at the current state of the project in 2025 — and wrap up with a live demonstration of what Linux (and Itanium) can still do today.

https://talks.openalt.cz/openalt-2025/talk/B7WRFX/ https://www.openalt.cz/2025/