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Intel loves to talk about Moore’s Law, its co-founder’s famed maxim about how rapidly miniaturization improves semiconductors. The company also prides itself on setting the pace, underscoring the strategy recently by deploying its most tiny circuitry in microprocessors for mainstream PCs.

Then there’s Itanium. The high-end microprocessor line, originally developed with help from Hewlett-Packard, uses an entirely different technology than the x86 chips that Intel popularized in desktop and laptop PCs and low-end servers. Itanium models have tended to lag the production processes used to manufacture other Intel chips, but the disparity seems particularly stark with the latest version.

Tukwila, the code name for a long-delayed Itanium model introduced Monday, is being built using manufacturing technology that creates lines of circuitry with features rated at 65 nanometers, or billionths of meter. That’s two technology generations behind the 32-nanometer process used in Intel’s latest x86 chips; the company earlier this year announced a $7 billion plan to accelerate the conversion of its U.S. factories to 32-nanometer technology.

To address the gap, Intel plans to take an unusual step with a successor to Tukwila called Poulson expected in two years–simply sidestepping the intervening generation of manufacturing technology, which makes 45-nanometer circuitry. “Our next-generation Itanium will skip 45 and go right to 32-nanometer,” said Kirk Skaugen, vice president of Intel’s architecture group and general manager of its data center group, during a briefing with reporters in San Francisco.

Why should anyone care about such measurements? Well, the size of transistors and other features on a chip translates pretty directly into the work they can do and data they can store. They also help determine the size of chips, which affects how much it costs to manufacture them–and, in turn, how profitable they are likely to be for the manufacturer.

Tukwila, which Intel says offers roughly twice the performance of its predecessor, has four processors and more than 2 billion transistors. It measures nearly 700 square millimeters. By contrast, the company’s forthcoming Xeon, an x86 chip created with 32-nanometer technology, has six processors and nearly 1.2 billion transistors but measures just 248 square millimeters.

To be sure, comparing such chips is a bit like comparing a Mack truck with a Ford F-150 pickup. Tukwila, now formally known as the Itanium 9300, has special features that make it uniquely suited for what the industry calls “scale up” computing–large servers that each may have many multi-core chips and have special reliability features for chores like running stock exchanges and networks of ATM machines. Xeon chips, by contrast, up to now have been used mainly in “scale out” applications like running Web sites; these may use hundreds of thousands of servers that each may have one or two chips.

But the high-end market isn’t just costly to serve; the volumes also are small. Shane Rau, an analyst at the research firm IDC, estimates that Intel sells tens of millions of Xeons each year but only tens of thousands of Itaniums. And such “scale up” applications seem to have suffered worse as companies reacted to the recession; Rau estimates Xeon shipments declined 7% in 2009 compared to 2008, while Itanium units were off about 50%.

Some customers, in theory, could have been waiting for the new model. Tukwila was delayed twice, which Skaugen says added features that will improve performance and allow follow on chips to fit in the same computers, a big benefit to customers.

But H-P–which IDC says accounted for nearly 97% of Itanium server shipments over the most recent four quarters–doesn’t sound miffed by the delay. Martin Fink, senior vice president and general manager of H-P’s business critical systems unit, says the company managed to keep selling its existing Itanium-based systems fairly well, considering the headwind of the economy. He says companies make “decade-long” decisions about the technology for their fundamental business operations, and don’t rapidly switch vendors or upgrade their technology willy-nilly.

Skaugen notes that Intel has a new eight-processor Xeon coming soon that will match many of the reliability features of Itanium. It’s not likely to be a complete replacement, though, since the operating systems that come with high-end systems sold by H-P and others also include technology that is designed to prevent system crashes and other problems.

But none of the challenges seem to be pushing Intel toward pulling the plug on the Itanium. Skaugen says it has “hundreds and hundreds” of engineers in Massachussets and Colorado working on Poulson and a subsequent addition to the Itanium line. “No one else is showing that longevity of commitment to the mission-critical space,” he said.