Intel has launched its newest Itanium chips, which has more than 1 billion transistors, targeting the high-end computing market. Intel said Itanium Processor 9000 series, previously codenamed 'Montecito', double the performance and lower energy requirements, improving performance per watt by 2.5 times compared to existing, single-core versions.
Intel said all server-maker members of the Itanium Solutions Alliance (ISA) will launch new Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 Processor 9000 series-based products.
Intel said the new Dual-Core Itanium 2 processors represent the world’s most intricate product design to date with more than 1.7 billion transistors. This allows Intel designers to deliver new features to the Itanium processor family that create robust virtualization capabilities, enhanced cache reliability and other mainframe-like capabilities.
Itanium was initially intended to penetrate all areas of computing including consumer desktop PC. However, it is confined to the small segment of high-end computing market due to delays and design problem. It has failed to live up to the original expectations when it partnered with HP to work on replacing the aging Pentium chip family.
However, with the new release Intel is set to attack the USD 28 billion high-ned computing market. Intel is backed by the vendors -- Hewlett-Packard, SGI, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, Bull, Unisys and Fujitsu-Siemens, who will begin selling computers using the chips in the next 30 to 90 days.
