the itanium bus communicates with the rest of the system. enterprise server makers differentiate their systems by making their own chipsets that interface the processor to memory, interconnections, and peripheral controllers. the chipset is the heart of the system-level architecture for each system design. creation of a chipset costs tens of millions of dollars and represents a major commitment to the use of the itanium. ibm created a chipset in 2003, and intel in 2002, but neither of them has developed chipsets to support technologies such as ddr2 or pci express.