A new Intel Itanium (IA-64) emulator that boots Windows
A developer has released an emulator capable of running Windows XP and Server 2003 on the legacy Intel Itanium (IA-64) architecture. While the software is currently in early development and runs slowly, it marks a significant milestone for enthusiasts of non-x86 computing history.
Why it matters
This project preserves computing history by allowing modern hardware to run software designed for obsolete, specialized enterprise processors.
Published: 18-07-2026 23:33 | Last update: 20-07-2026 05:31 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article
The emulation space is going crazy, after my previous post on Windows booting on DEC Alpha es40 emulator , there is now another huge breakthrough in the emulation of other non-x86 CPU emulation. Yufeng Gao with help from gdwnldsKSC (the man behind the updated es40-fork) has released version 0.1 of his Intel Itanium (IA-64) emulator that boots the Itanium version of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP 64-bit. No OpenVMS or HP-UX yet and Linux / BSD also don't boot. But Windows is amazing already.
Here is a screenshot of Windows Server 2003 with the Luna theme running in the emulator:
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in