Intel Delays Dual-Core Processor, Plans New Server Chip

Kajakske writes "Intel said Thursday that it is pushing back the release of its first dual-core processor by a year to 2005 and adding a new microprocessor for servers to its Itanium II lineup. On the other hand, Intel is moving forward in the area of new technologies."

Comments

Not much competition ?

[CountBrass]

Interesting, especially given the lack-luster products produced by Motorola and the relative lack of success of AMD (I use an XP1800+ and think its great, the company just doesn't seem to do too well.) I wonder if this lack of competition is a major factor - Intel doesn't need to keep spending money researching new chips if it's current generation are so far ahead of its competitors.

I also wonder if the economy is a factor compounding that - ok you can research your way into new demand but why bother when you're that far ahead (see above) ?

All I can say is, hurry up IBM and get those new PPC chips out the door (and into my Mac ;-).

Re:Not much competition ?

[kahei]

Intel doesn't need to keep spending money researching new chips if it's current generation are so far ahead of its competitors.

The thing is, this isn't a chip technology race. It's a chip fabrication/distribution/pricing race.

Intel's chips are not technologically superior to AMDs (I know Intel has some major technology assets, but they mostly don't affect the chips in production now). On the other hand, Intel's capital, fabrication capacity, distribution, and market clout are far superior to AMDs. Intel is concentrating on the areas where it has the advantage, which are also the decisive areas.

If only this *was* a technology race. But that's market forces for you.

Re:Not much competition ?

[TheSunborn]

I don't think so. Remember they talk about the Itanium II type chip, not a Pentium. And Itanium could really need a speedup in the fight against sparc and mips

Martin

Re:Not much competition ?

[CountBrass]

Good point, but I would expect any (succesful) technology that appears in the server line to make it into the consumer line at some point. So dropping something from Itanium today means it's unlikely to appear in the Pentium tomorrow.

Re:Not much competition ?

[nehril]

I think they will continue to spend just as much money on research. they just wont *release* new tech unless competition forces them to.

they may have the technology right now that doubles or triples current performance, but why play that card now? keep the tech in reserve, and let it roll out at a "natural" moore's law rate in order to keep the investors happy.

if motorola should happen to shock the world and release a 4 ghz multicore G5 running with 800mhz DDR RAM (we can dream, can't we??), then intel can roll out whatever they have in reserve a bit earlier.

Remember, Intel is run by businessmen, for businessmen. Technology to them is only a means to generate cash.

Re:Not much competition ?

[Kourino]

Remember, Intel is run by businessmen, for businessmen. Technology to them is only a means to generate cash.

Sigh. I suspect that's exactly it. And that's what pisses me off.

Because, as a paying customer, technology to me is a whole hell of a lot more than a way to generate cash. It's a way to do interesting things, and also an end of its own, in a way - exploring the technology is really fun. Anyone remember sitting down with 16/32-bit assemblers and triple-faulting your processor until you got "protected mode" down?

I haven't had that much fun directly with a CPU in years. When I get time to play with my EV56 machine, I'll have some of it again; it'll be my first architecture after IA-32 (I haven't done that much interesting low-level on IA-64 besides performance counters).

And ... waxing philosophical here, so feel free to ignore the rest of this comment. But someone in a different thread recently (don't remember which ... ) commented on the mishandling of the Alpha IP by Compaq, then HP, then its more or less non-use by Intel. And basically said "these people are keeping the market down with their competition, and limiting our future technological growth as a society." I'm not sure how accurate or fair that is (I suspect I'm just getting bitchy now) ... but it's really fscking creepy to think about.

Although really, this is partially because DEC couldn't market the Alpha to save its life. In fact, it didn't.

Re:Not much competition ?

[mpsmps]

Remember, Intel is run by businessmen, for businessmen. Technology to them is only a means to generate cash.

Sigh. I suspect that's exactly it. And that's what pisses me off.

The problem is that new fab lines cost billions of dollars and laying out a new iteration of a microprocessor is not cheap either, so the chip manufacturers need to be pretty brutal about producing money-makers on their fab lines.

Re:Not much competition ?

[Bert64]

Well, your point is very true.. intel has no competition at the low end (read: x86) market, their chips have much higher clock rates than AMD offerings, and are edging ahead in speed now, but the high clock is most effective in selling them to the masses.
Where they need to develop and compete, is at the high end market, where they have a rather lackluster product of their own, the itanium... which is being completely blown away by alpha in the raw performance stakes, i think sparc and power4 might be nudging ahead of it too.. But when you consider the poor compiler and application support for itanium right now, they REALLY fall behind the others...
And as has been stated before, itanium should never have existed... hp should be concentrating on the alpha, which already has the software support, performance and reputation that itanium is still striving for.

Re:Not much competition ?

[cp5i6]

Intel is acutally run not by business men so you are very wrong.

Andy Groove and Gordon Moore (two founders of intel) are by far two of the most prominent semiconductor scientists of the 20th century.

Dr. Grove himself has written over 40 technical papers and holds several patents on semiconductor devices and technology. For six years he taught a graduate course in semiconductor device physics at the University of California, Berkeley.

How many people here can say they have taught 6 years in a graduate course at Berkeley?

Craig Barrett the current CEo of intel himself is nothign to scoff at either. He's a fulbright fellow that received his PHD in material science at stanford. He has 40 technical papers dealing with the influence of microstructure on the properties of materials.

So before you knock on Intel about how businessmen is run by businessmen do your homework.

These guys are Far from business men. They are first and foremost incredibly talented scientist who happen to be good at business.

Intel has one of the world's LARGEST cost in terms of research and development along with GE, MS and AMD.

I'm sorry but you are sadly mistaken if you feel that Intel is run by businessmen.

Re:Not much competition ?

[JCholewa]

> and the relative lack of success of AMD (I use an XP1800+ and think its great,
> the company just doesn't seem to do too well.)

Well, part of that is crappy management, but a large portion of their troubles are simple due to the fact that Intel is given the benefit of the doubt by the OEMs and the consumers. Even during the year or two when AMD consistently had faster chips with fewer bugs than Intel had, Intel made tons of money and AMD merely made enough to recoup past debts. People buy Intel because they're Intel. This will happen whether Intel is doing a good job or a bad job. Thankfully, they're doing a good, honest job and earning those buyers now, but from 1998 to 2001, they were not doing their customers honour.

> Intel doesn't need to keep spending money researching new chips
> if it's current generation are so far ahead of its competitors.

They aren't. Intel's Pentium 4 is pretty much on par with AMD's Athlon. But Intel has five or so x86 plants that they can leverage to test different ways to most optimally ramp their chip frequencies. You don't just throw a design and a fab process into a bucket, shake it, and come up with the resultant chip speed. You have to devote a substantial part of your manufacturing resources to the research needed to optimally match your current chip design to your current manufacturing technology.

In addition to this, Intel happens to be something like a year ahead in base process technology. They moved to 130nm six months before AMD did their equivalent move. This means they're very much ahead in that respect. So if their chips were a generation *behind*, Intel would be competitive in chip performance (this is was almost happened with the Pentium III and the early implementation of the Pentium 4). As it is, the current P4 is a competitive design coupled with a slightly more advanced manufacturing process, so Intel is a couple speed grades ahead.

Intel has to keep researching constantly. AMD does a surprisingly good job at ramping technology at approximately the same rate as Intel, despite having about a twentieth of their capital resources. If Intel stopped researching for just a few weeks, they'd lose the leverage they have to stay superior in the current climate. And that's not counting on the outside possibility that K8/Hammer might exceed performance expectations and outperform the top Pentium 4 upon release.

-JC

G5 race?

[Sh0t]

Well this should make some maclots happy.

This may give Apple the time it needs to roll out that mysterious market shattering "g5" processor we keep hearing rumors about.

Maybe it's strategy to ride the tide and invest in long term goals rather than trying to get marketshare now will pay off.

Maybe not

Re:G5 race?

[iNub]

The Motorola 85xx chip might be going for use in embedded devices, but I can almost guarantee you that it will *not* be used in a cell phone. A PDA? I doubt it, unless it's compatible with the chips that are already used in PDA's. This chip is more for things like network hardware, cable boxes, cars, and the like. It draws too much power to put it in a cell phone, and it's not quite powerful enough to put in a desktop.

If you're looking for the next generation of PowerPC chips, look to IBM's PPC970.

Intel is in trouble

[g4dget]

Hyperthreading and other tinkering isn't going to help Intel. The Itanium is a dud: systems based on it are hugely expensive, have iffy performance, and are not usefully x86 compatible.

If AMD manages to stick to their schedule on the 64bit chips, they are going to have a big winner on their hands: systems that can address more than 4G in a single process and yet are backwards compatible.

Re:Intel is in trouble

[brejc8]

It doesnt matter that itanic is a sinker. All the companies like HP, SGI etc. are gonna keep it afloat, even if it means killing their own children. e.i. Alpha :(

Re:Intel is in trouble

[JCholewa]

> Wow - way to make up stuff.
> The Itanium II is certainly not a dud

Agreed. From an engineering standpoint, it's quite a nice chip. I don't agree with some philosophical stuff in the ISA (I'm not that much of a VLIW-for-general-purpose fan, but hey), but the microarchitecture and implementation seems very nice. I do wish that it was easier to implement OOE on IPF, though. :(

> x86 compatibility is worthless ina high end 64-bit machine, somethin AMD doesn't seem to grasp.
> They're marketing a high end technology (consumers and normal business users don't need
> 64-bit technology and won't for a while) to the mainstream market. Morons.

Feh. A big "screw you" on that. AMD isn't catering to the high end server group. They obviously can't just teleport into that market. Their catering to the smaller business that uses Xeon servers. Backwards compatibility with x86 is of the utmost importance in this market. Basically, they're marketing x86 workstations and x86 servers that happen to allow you to enhance performance of some types of programs with simple recompilations. There is a good chance that I might get the lower end version of this product when it comes out, as I use Linux, which may strongly benefit from those extra registers in x86-64, on my home machine. We'll have to see, of course, before I pull out the green.

> And you seem to be ignoring the numbers (remember that 'reality' the rest of us
> live in matters to us, if not to you). AMD is going broke. Intel isn't.

That's a bad measure to use. You don't have any controls in this analysis. There are a lot of reasons why AMD is losing money (poor management a la Hector Ruiz, inability for a relatively small company to handle a very harsh recession, etc..), and there are a lot of reasons why Intel is still doing phenomenally (people buy Intel no matter what, currently excellent execution, they can afford to strongly diversify). Many of these reasons have nothing to do with the technical/engineering side of the equation. IMHO, both AMD and Intel have incredible engineers, and frankly AMD especially warrants respect for being able to ramp technology at *approximately* the same rate as Intel despite having a very, very miniscule fraction of their resources. That is why I was a big AMD fan a couple years ago, at around the time when the company was dominated by the excellent triumverate of Sanders, Raza, Meyer as well as a couple critical folks like Norbert Juffa and Paul Hsieh. At this point in time, AMD was a quantum of a company that somehow managed to produce a piece of engineering that allowed them to, for a brief time, outdo the capabilities of a company fifty times their size. I am somewhat dismayed that AMD turned into a more traditional company over the last two years or so.

-JC

thanks for the explanation

[gripdamage]

The Santa Clara, California-based company is the leading maker of processors, which serve as the brains of computers.

And then there are the customers, who consume these processors like living dead zombies animated by radiation from outer space.

When will they target *ME*?

[pla]

At first, it bummed me out to read this headline, since I would *love* such a toy.

Then, following the link, I realized they only plan this dual core toy for the *Itanium* line, anyway. Bummer. I do like how the article says Intel hasn't sold as many of them as they planned, though... Can we say "DOA"? I thought they had all but abandoned the mega-flop (in the movie sense, not the CPU sense) Itanium.

Anyway, back to my point...

I don't want a CPU with 6MB of cache (the reason they give for pushing back their SMP-on-a-chip). I don't want an Itanium. I don't even want a P4.

I would *run* to the store, however, to buy a quad (since at their current fabs, they could fit four in the same space as a single P4, so why only go dual) P-III somewhere around 1.5Ghz (like the chip they plan to release with 6 or 9MB of cache). Not an inconsiderable amount of CPU power (My current machine has "only" a dual PIII/933, and I have yet to find my "killer app" reason to upgrade).

So, listen up, Intel - the server market may pay more per chip, but we "mere" home users buy a HELL of a lot more of them. So throw us a bone, 'kay?

Because if you don't, AMD will (eventually). ;-)

Re:When will they target *ME*?

[iNub]

So, listen up, Intel - the server market may pay more per chip, but we "mere" home users buy a HELL of a lot more of them Server chips are sold at an unbelievable markup, though, so they make more profit from them. It's not uncommon to spend a couple grand on a CPU module for a server.

Re:When will they target *ME*?

[Sycraft-fu]

What is this, AMD cheerleader day or something? Ok, understand that new technology, espically something as big a change as the Itanium takes TIME to develop. The Itainum is NOT for desktops right now, and if you think that's who Intel is targeting, you have a poor understanding of business.

The Itainum 1 was mainly a research chip, a first generation to let people start to develop and test on real hardware. MS took advantage of this and rolled out an IA-64 version of Windows. Intel was hoping for some server sales, but the real goal was getting the new IA-64 system into production silicon.

The Itainum 2 is a much more practical chip. It is something that peopel will probably seriously look at for high end server as it is competitive with 64-bit chips from Sun. You may see it in a few workstation, but probably not many, it's mostly a server chip. Remember, we are taling competiton with big iron here, not desktop system.

Now, as time goes on, the technology will become much more mature and cheap and will eventually filter into desktops. Hopefully, that will happen before we start to hit the 32-bit crunch.

The idea here is not wait until the last second for people to need a 64-bit chip, but to get it to market sooner so you can start working on it.

This, by the way, is not the first tiem Intel has done something like this. The Pentium Pro was blasted when it came out because it's 16-bit performance sucked. Sure it did great for 32-bit but who teh hell used that? Well tehn along came Windows 95 and teh PPro architecture was refined into the PII and it was a great chip since 32-bit was rising rapidly and it smoked at that. The P3 is the third incarnation of the PPro architecture. It's optimised and enhanced (ala SSE) but the same fundimental architecture. The P4 is the first brand new architecture since the P3.

The Itainum is a much larger change than the P4 since it is not only going to 64-bit but a new ISA (EPIC instead of CISC). It needs time and testing before it will be real.

However, Intel is certianly NOT ignoring the home market. The P4 is going to continue to be refined (we are on the 3rd revision of P4s and a 4th is soon comming) and should scale up to around 10ghz. There is plenty of life left in it (and probably subsequent chips based on its architecture). Then, by the time it is getting ready to be replaced, the then current Itanium chip should be ready for prime time.

So quit your bitching. If you don't want a P4, fine, stick with a P3. Why the hell do you care WHAT Intel is doing if you don't want a new chip? When you do decide you want one, get a P4, you ahve no lack of options with them and they scale to rather high speeds already and are not stopping.

My uninformed opinion...

[iNub]

With a P4 killer on the way from IBM, who already has a 90nm/300mm plant in operation, I've been expecting Intel to announce that they have smaller, more efficient processes already in operation. But, what's this? Intel is *behind* IBM in the chip fabbing technology? This might bode well for my next Apple purchase. (Assuming my jobless, broke ass finds a job by the time Apple moves to this new CPU.)

Obviously, I don't keep up with this part of the computer world. Is IBM normally ahead of the game when it comes to new chip processes? It seems to me like Intel, whose main priority is processor manufacture and distribution, would be ahead of IBM, who have diversified to the point that I don't even know what their primary product is.

Re:My uninformed opinion...

[CountBrass]

"IBM, who have diversified to the point that I don't even know what their primary product is."

Intel principally produce products (chips), IBM don't they're a services company - that's the big, big change Gerstner made in turning the company around. Hope this helps with your confusion :-)

Re:My uninformed opinion...

[CountBrass]

IBM ($81.19billion FY 2002) is four times the size of Intel ($26.76billion FY 2002) in revenue terms.

Re:My uninformed opinion...

[larien]

I guess the real question is how much research money goes into chip development? IBM sell many different products (including intel servers, Unix servers, software products, consultancy, mainframes etc, etc) while Intel sell (mainly) Pentium CPUs with some sidelines in graphics etc. So while IBM is 4 times the size of Intel, I'd imagine Intel probably spends more on CPU development.

Re:My uninformed opinion...

[Cyberdyne]

I guess the real question is how much research money goes into chip development? IBM sell many different products (including intel servers, Unix servers, software products, consultancy, mainframes etc, etc) while Intel sell (mainly) Pentium CPUs with some sidelines in graphics etc. So while IBM is 4 times the size of Intel, I'd imagine Intel probably spends more on CPU development.

Except every machine IBM sells (excluding their x86 systems, which just buy in Intel chips) is based around a single CPU architecture - POWER, the heavy-duty PowerPC variant. So, everything IBM does in 'CPU development' is going into the POWER/PowerPC core, although they seem to share a lot of generic fabrication advances (copper interconnect, silicon-on-insulator etc) with AMD for the Athlon/Hammer line.

Granted, IBM do a lot more than just CPU design, whereas Intel are almost exclusively CPU vendors (although Intel divide their efforts between IA-64, x86, i960 and StrongARM/Xscale) with some sidelines (NICs, switches, chipsets). Overall, I'd say IBM put a lot more muscle behind POWER/PowerPC than Intel can behind IA-64 and x86.

Is it good for the customer ?

[watzinaneihm]

I think HP and Intel are putting all bets on their child Itanium.
First HP holds back on their alpha line, then Intel does this....
The important question is, Is it good for the consumer by letting others into the market (lesser competition, flatter market etc.) or does it harm him by slowing down technology?

Re:Is it good for the customer ?

[Sh0t]

I think that largely depends on what the application is going to be. If you need bleeding edge numbering crunching performance or have such a need for an ultra spec 64-bit cpu cluster, this is obviously a let down. If you are more of the gormound mindset and are looking to upgrade/replace existing servers with more price competitive options, this may be a blessing in disguise(not even so hidden).

How does hyperthreading differ?

[dmeranda]

How does Intel's Hyperthreading Technology differ from the dual core? I realize the obvious, such as one in in the Pentium line and the other in the Itanium, and the physical differences of packaging.

But how how different will the architecture of a dual-die chip differ from hyperthreading, such as which CPU components will be shared (like cache, instruction decode/scheduler, etc.)?

Also would the Linux kernel's logical processor abstraction used to enable hyperthreading support (see IBM developerWorks Article) also continue to work effectively with a dual-die chip?

Re:How does hyperthreading differ?

[iNub]

A CPU with hyperthreading enabled will never complete a task faster than two of the same CPUs running parallel with hyperthreading disabled.

Well, of course 2 processors will outperform a single one. Processors have a finite pool of resources. The point of HT is not to perform like dual processor, rather to act like them, increasing the performance of a single CPU at a negligible cost.

Buying 2 processors would cost you twice as much as a single processor, even more when you consider the cost of a motherboard and enough memory to make dual processors a worthwhile investment. You would get roughly double (OK, 1.6x) the performance at double the cost.

Buying a single HT-enabled processor, however, would only cost you 10 or 15% more, and you would be seeing a 20-30% performance increase across the board. I think that's a better deal.

Re:How does hyperthreading differ?

[nuintari]

So, can I have both? Buy two hyperthreaded chips and stick em int he same board, and get an even weirder inneficient speed increase. Or would writing a scheduler to handle it be too hard, virtual chips on top of two real chips, I imagine it could appear to look like 4 way smp when in reality its 2 way weird smp. I unno, I want one!

Re:How does hyperthreading differ?

[RockyMountain]

Don't think of hyperthreading as an alternative to dual-core or 2-way SMP. It isn't. Think of hyperthreading as a way of squeaking out more usage from the existing execution units in your CPU.

Lets say you have a hypothetical CPU with n execution units. (For simplicity, we won't distinguish between types of execution unit, such as integer, floating point, branch, etc).

You fetch and decode a bunch of instructions, and then issue them n-at-a-time to these execution units, for maximum performance.

But, the instruciton stream has some inherent limitations on which instructions can be issued concurrently, due to dependencies between instructions, instruction type mix mismatching available execution unit type mix, and instructions waiting on loads, etc. Even with control and data speculation, there may be fewer than n instructions READY to issue on the next clock cycle.

So, you have three choices:

1. Just issue the ready instructions, and let the other execution units go to waste.

2. Switch to another thread, maybe it has n instructions READY to run. (This is usually called on-chip multithreading).

3. Issue a mix of READY instructions, some from one thread, and some from another thread, which combined together use all n execution units. Both threads get to make some forward progress, and no execution units are "wasted". (This is usually called on-chip hyperthreading).

So, back to the big picture: Hyperthreading isn't a replacement for a second CPU or core, because it does not provide any more computation resources. It's a way of using the available resources in a CPU more efficiently, so that fewer computation units are likely to go to waste on any given clock cycle.

A dual core chip typically duplicates almost ALL the circuitry on the chip, often even including the caches. Big chips have low yields and cost a lot. Dual core is a way of throwing a lot of money at getting more parallelism. Kind of like having multiple CPUs in separate sockets, but with both advantages and disadvantages coming from the closer coupling. Hyperthreading is a way of throwing far less money at the problem of squeaking out some of the wasted performance in an existing CPU design.

It isn't free, by the way. Hyperthreaded CPUs do have to duplicate some hardware on a per-thread basis. Obviously, thread context registers like program counter and stack pointer have to be duplicated, as do application registers. But they share caches, execution units, decoders, memory management units (mostly), bus interface logic, etc.

Hope this paints a clear picture.

So they're going to do it for real now?

[t0qer]

"Intel said Thursday that it is pushing back the release of its first dual-core processor

So now instead of virtual processors (read hyperthreading) intel is going to release a chip that does hyperthreading for real?

Damn i'm confused.

(BTW tried hyperthreading, marginal increase for some apps, slowdowns for others)

Re:So they're going to do it for real now?

[iNub]

From what I've read, HT doesn't even have a possibility to slow things down. Do you know how multithreading works in an SMP environment?

What HT does is allows this single CPU to pretend to be 2 independent CPUs, effectively splitting it in half (but not necissarily down the middle). The upshot of this is that it can more effectively deal with cache bubbles and all those horrible performance-draining problems Intel chips, with their insanely deep pipelines, are vulnerable to.

Basically, if you only throw a single thread at the processor, only the first virtual processor does the work and the other virtual processor is idle, allowing the entire processing power of the computer to deal with one problem, instead of half of it sitting idle. This is an advantage because HT only requires 5% more transistors, and the net benefit is something like a 20% performance increase. Of course, if you're not doing any work where you actually *use* multithreaded apps, you'll never understand why HT is a big deal.

This post has gone way beyond what I originally intended to say, and instead of rescuing it, I'm just going to kill it now.

Re:So they're going to do it for real now?

[larien]

Bzzt! From what I've read, HT can and does slow down some applications

For a good analysis, read this article over at Ars. In particular, it does point out that the likely cause of slowdowns in some apps is down to cache contention. Near the end, it also says:

With the wrong mix of code, hyper-threading decreases performance, just like it can increase performance with the right mix of code

In short, sometimes it helps, sometimes it hinders.

Finally, you don't need multithreaded apps to take advantage of SMP/HT; if you're running a cpu intensive application on one CPU, the other is free for interactive stuff. You do, however, get much more benefit in a multi-threaded application.

Great - more processor speed. Do we need it?

[altgrr]

For most home (and, indeed, server) applications, I would have thought that having a dual core processor won't make much of a difference, just as processor speed doesn't - rather, what is important is the speed you can get data in and out of the processor.

Overall CPU speed doesn't seem to make much of a difference when the bus speed is the same, certainly not in the systems I've tested. However, up the CPU bus speed, and you'll find your performance greatly improved, because you're getting data to the processor quicker.

Some years ago, I tested this theory with a couple of old 686 chips - one 200, one 233. I benchmarked the 200 and 233 both at 75MHz bus - virtually identical results. Then I ran them at the same CPU speed, but 83MHz bus, and the benchmark results improved by exactly 83/75. What does this tell you? :-)

Re:Great - more processor speed. Do we need it?

[mccalli]

Some years ago, I tested this theory with a couple of old 686 chips - one 200, one 233. I benchmarked the 200 and 233 both at 75MHz bus - virtually identical results. Then I ran them at the same CPU speed, but 83MHz bus, and the benchmark results improved by exactly 83/75. What does this tell you? :-)

That you were running a single thread computationally-intensive task as a benchmark.

Dual CPUs are there to help parallism. They won't show great increases on pure number-crunching. For example, my previous machine was a dual-533 Celeron, and it would be nice and responsive whilst running multiple apps, even if one of them (say, my MP3 encoder) decided to max out one of the CPUs.

Cheers,
Ian

in the other news...

[dunkelfalke]

amd opteron smokes the competition in the 4-way sap test:

c't magazine

translation of a short except: even early prototypes of amd opteron can win over all competition in four ways systems - either 32 or 64 bit - at the sap sd benchmark. and that with only 1.6 ghz (planned to launch at 2 ghz)

i think the chart says it all. go amd!

Grr.

[Kourino]

And the vaunted EV8 tech we've been guessing would be infused into later IA-64 products gets pushed farther away into the distance ...

It's good to see at least they're on the road to 65-nm fabrication. But it'd be nice if they breathed some more life into their current architectures. IA-64 docs are interesting reads, but the hardware just isn't terribly impressive in practice yet. (At least, kernel compiles felt like they took forever on my professor's dual IA-64 research boxes compared to ... my P3 866 at home.) And. New Pentiums? Watch, as I leap for joy. Or don't, in fact, leap.

I'd like to see Intel do something New[tm] and Exciting[tm] on the home market. IA-64 is that, I'm guessing they just need to tweak existing setups or something. I love the feeling of having a processor architecture before me to dig into. (That's why I picked up an old EV56 machine for ... hehe ... testing.) But are we non-server folk ever going to see something that's drastically different from the CPU in the computer we got a decade ago?

Does n't it defeat the purpose?

[msgmonkey]

I was under the impression that there was competing "schools of thought" with regards to how extra preformance was to be gained as we start to hit the manufacturing "wall".

On one hand you have the VLIW type guys (or EPIC in intel speak) whereby you increase parallelism at the instruction level.. or the Multicore guys where you increase the number of number instructions executed by having multiple cores running different tasks.

Whilst in principle I've got no problems with merging the two, I get the impression that by going the dual core route Intel are admitting that they wont be-able to get the kind of performance out of EPIC that they where promising.

Just a thought to consider.

Look at the other fun fact about the Itanium...

[dpilot]

AFAIK, it is *the most proprietary* processor on the market.

When they began the IA64, Intel and HP set up a company to hold the IP related to the new architecture. That company owns the IP, Intel and HP get rights to use it. None of Intel's or HP's cross-licensing agreements apply to any of the IA64 IP.

AFAIK, every other major CPU ends up have some amount of cross-licensing, except the IA-64. They own it lock, stock, and barrel. The only chink in the armor seems to be Intergraph.

...they just wont *release* new tech...

[dpilot]

I wouldn't count this too far. Unless it gets tested in the marketplace, new tech tends to get rather...inbred. Too many generations of "new tech held internally" and you'll find it simply can't be put to market, because it turns out to be irrelevant, or not well adapted to the current situation, or...

Been there, done that.

some just dont get it...

[john_uy]

from what i have read from now, it seems that some readers are looking at the itanium 2 as a chip for consumer. in this case, it might never be. some comments just seem to be flamebait.

the itanium series is designed with special applications in mind including scientific work and datamining applications. keep in mind that 9mb of cache may be too big for the typical application but for those high end where you would want to let say analyize an entire database and get statistics to determine trends, then you might want to think again. faring the cpu even with a higher clock rate but with a small cache won't keep up with the competition.

i would be pleased to see an amd opteron chip with at least 3mb cache in the market (maybe i can think about getting one of them.)

with competition, i believe there are just three right now, with ibm's power, and sun's ultrasparc to make the rest. this is for the high end arena.

and of course, the processor is just a variable to the equation. in the enterprise arena, you must need a good platform. that is it should be very scalable (with hundrends of processors in a system and upgradability) and reliable (with 99.999% uptime and hot swap components including cpu, memory, i/o cards, etc.). intel has good tools and partners for these and amd will take some time to catch up (but i believe they would.)

intel has some good plans for itanium including the dual-core cpu and even the same pin compatibility (although it doesn't mean it can be fitted into the old ones.) the thing is, intel is already gearing a battle in the enterprise arena. with its resources, it will be able to deliver quite better products in the future.

i believe intel has lots of technologies lying around that we do not even know. of course, currently, you will not put all your cards. wait for some threat and put it down one by one.

with the latest results, intel is doing well financially compared to a greater loss for amd. their new hammer line will be a saving factor for them (question still to be answered this year - and i'm excited about this.) and i'm sure intel already has a pentium 4 running at 5ghz lurking around their labs. they are just waiting for the new processor before we start a new ghz revolution. :)

Intel is NOT pushing back anything

[javatips]

Humm, seems that the editor got it wrong...

From CNet News they are actually going to release it FASTER that the previous schedule.

The double core itanium deadline is now 2005 instead of 2007 and adding a new chip for 2004.

Maybe the confusion arise fromthe fact that "Originally, Montecito, due in 2004, wasn't a dual-core chip, but it was morphed after engineering and manufacturing teams concurred that a dual-processor chip could be mass-manufactured at Intel by 2005."

It would be a good idea to change the headline!

From the article..

[grub]

The Santa Clara, California-based company is the leading maker of processors, which serve as the brains of computers.

Ah, so that's what those things do..