Intel launched the Itanium 2 dual-core chip

Yesterday (July 18), Intel officially launched the next-generation Itanium chip, codenamed Montecito - with twice the capacity of its previous generation.

The Montecito chip is a genuine dual-core chip and is the first dual-core chip in the Itanium product line. And among Intel's six Montecito chip releases this time, the 9050 version is the most advanced version. Montecito 9050 contains 1.7 billion transistors and has 24MB high-speed cache. Operation speed of Montecito chip versions ranges from 1.4GHz to 1.6GHz. The selling price is around 696 USD to 3,692 USD.

The Montecito chip versions released this time all use 533MHz system bandwidth, the only Montecito 9010 version uses 400MHz bandwidth. In terms of energy consumption, Montecito consumes an average of 104W.

Analysts estimate that the release of a series of Montecito chip versions with a fully upgraded operating capability is a new step for Intel to bring this chip line to "a standard". in the high-end server product line. Meanwhile the Xeon chip line of this company has dominated the low-cost server market share.

The first version of Intel's Itanium chip was a disappointing product since it was both old and slow, and it was not compatible with the x86 platform software like the Pentium chip. But then, in order to compete with Sun Microsystems and Power chips from IBM, Intel decided to change the entire Itanium chip. With Montecito chip, Intel said all previous Itanium-related problems were overcome.

" We have gone through a process of developing a new, challenging processor architecture, " said Pat Gelsinger, director of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. " It is the same process that currently has new incentives ."

Those incentives did not help Intel much when it had to postpone the launch of Montecito once. Accordingly, Montecito chip will be released this year instead of in 2005 as previously planned.

Meanwhile, Montecito's speed is also at least 200MHz slower than the plan. Montecito also lost the Foxton feature by Intel, a feature that allows the chip to operate at a faster speed of 200MHz if the chip is operating at the optimum temperature.

Montecito chip server applications will officially appear on the market in September next. And certainly these host systems will have the names of the leading giants in Intel's Itanium chip product line such as HP, Fujitsu, Bull .

HP is the dominant brand in the Itanium application server market. But perhaps in the near future HP's competitors will gain significant market share. Meanwhile, IBM and Dell have stopped providing Itanium application servers and Sun has never had Itanium applications planned for server products.

Hoang Dung