OK! you all know, Itanium, the new CPU from intel is a 64 bits cpu. It uses a completely new architecture than previous microprocessors. An EPIC ( Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing , I think ) architecture is used to make a high performance MIMD engine.
However, why we should use 64 bits CPUs for our ( for example ) chip place and route process? I think high performance 32 bits CPU such as P4 or Athlon will be enough, those 64 bits CPUs are mainly produced for servers I think.
Any idea?