Explicitly parallel instruction computing (
EPIC) is a term coined in 1997 by the
HP–Intel alliance to describe a
computing paradigm that researchers had been investigating since the early 1980s. This paradigm is also called
Independence architectures. It was the basis for
Intel and
HP development of the Intel
Itanium architecture, and
HP later asserted that "EPIC" was merely an old term for the Itanium architecture. EPIC permits microprocessors to execute software instructions in parallel by using the
compiler, rather than complex on-
die circuitry, to control parallel instruction execution. This was intended to allow simple performance scaling without resorting to higher
clock frequencies.