Intel ships the Itanium 2

 

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By Alun Williams

Posted on 8 Jul 2002 at 15:50

Faster data analysis and online transaction processing is the promise of Intel's next-generation 64-bit processor, the Itanium 2, which begins commercial shipments today.

The Itanium 2 is targeted at servers and workstations running enterprise-scale or technically demanding applications and it features a new Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC) design. In layman's terms, this means that compilers are used to pre-optimise parallel execution of data within the processor. It is the second in a family of processors to be based on the Intel Itanium architecture.

Other headline features new to the Itanium 2 include a three-fold increase in the speed of the system bus (6.4Gb/sec), Level 3 cache becoming internal to the processor, and faster access to cache memory.

Available at speeds of 1GHz and 900 MHz, the Itanium 2 is integrated with up to 3Mb of Level 3 cache and reliability features include extensive error detection and correction. Its Machine Check Architecture is designed to prevent any data loss or corruption.

Applications already being customised for the new processor include such enterprise heavyweights as BEA Weblogic, IBM DB2 and Websphere, Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Oracle9i Database and Oracle9i Application Server and SAP R/3.

According to Mike Fister, senior VP for Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group, '2002 will be the year the Itanium processor family makes real headway toward becoming the platform of choice in high-end data centre computing.'

You can find more info on the new 64-bit processor on the Intel Web site.

Pricing for an Itanium 2 will start from $1,338 (900MHz frequency with 1.5Mb of L3 cache).

Accompanying the release of the Itanium 2, Microsoft has announced its support of the new processor with Windows Advanced Server, Limited Edition Version 1.2, which is to be made available to server OEMs later this month.

Further Itanium 2 support from Microsoft is in the pipeline with 64-bit Windows .NET Servers and Windows XP 64-Bit Edition Version 2003 which - as the date suggests - will be available early in 2003.

Other operating systems that work with the Itanium 2 processor include Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX and Linux systems from Caldera, MSC.Software, Red Hat, SuSE and TurboLinux.

Due for release in the autumn will be the Intel E8870 chipset, which will be able to support systems with up to 16 Itanium 2 processors (and more processors per system using OEM custom switches). In the meantime, OEMs will be supplying their own chipsets to work with the Itanium 2, such as the HP Chipset zx1, for example.