  ALICE is the general purpose heavy-ion detector at the CERN LHC. Its goal is
to investigate the properties of the strongly interacting matter under the
extreme conditions of density and temperature reached in Pb{Pb collisions, with
the aim to characterize the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). In this scenario, the
upgrade of the ALICE inner tracker targets physics topics in which ALICE can
bring a unique contribution to the QGP characterization via the heavy avour
probes. We present an overview of the inner tracker upgrade and the expected
physics performance for heavy avour measurements.
