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Intel Unveils Next Gen Itanium Processor

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the who-doesn't-like-faster dept.

MojoKid writes "This week, at ISSCC Intel unveiled its next-generation Itanium processor, codenamed Poulson. This new design is easily the most significant update to Itanium Intel has ever built and could upset the current balance of power at the highest-end of the server / mainframe market. It may also be the Itanium that fully redeems the brand name and sheds the last vestiges of negativity that have dogged the chip since it launched ten years ago. Poulson incorporates a number of advances in its record-breaking 3.1 Billion transistors. It's socket-compatible with the older Tukwila processors and offers up to eight cores and 54MB of on-die memory."

12 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. His name was Robert Paulson by GoNINzo · · Score: 3, Funny

    Guess the guys at Intel have been watching Fight Club a little too much.

    --
    Gonzo Granzeau
    "Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
  2. Itanium flashbacks by ArhcAngel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Does anyone else cringe when they here Itanium? The early chips still give me nightmares.

    --
    "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    1. Re:Itanium flashbacks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I work with the world's foremost experts on optimizing for Itanium 2. All available compilers suck. If you are willing to invest the effort to hand tweek, you can squeeze amazing performance out of the processors. They are extremely memory bound (hence 54MB cache now on chip). It is usually faster to recalculate numerical values than to fetch stored results.

      We work with large high performance computing systems/clusters. IBM Power 7 is fastest hands down for numerical work if you plan to use the crap output from the compiler directly. Recent Intel Xeon is as fast as Power 7 if you adjust all the fiddly settings and use some trial and error, but Xeon doesn't scale well for Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP). Itanium 2 wins by a bit if you invest huge effort. Power 7 would probably be fastest overall for numerical work if we invested the same effort into optimizing that we do for Itanium. However, we don't have to invest the effort for Power 7 to be "fast enough".

    2. Re:Itanium flashbacks by TheLink · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Would the same optimizations for the Itanium work OK for the Itanium 2 and for the upcoming Itanium? Or would the optimizations be too generation specific?

      AFAIK the problem with the Itanic was the Itanic was better at "embarrassingly parallel" problems. But that meant you could usually get the same (or better) performance with two or more x86 servers at a lower cost... And the x86 processors would do better than the Itanic on code that's not been optimized by super experts.

      --
    3. Re:Itanium flashbacks by mevets · · Score: 4, Funny

      | I work with the world's foremost experts on optimizing for Itanium 2....

      So when your whole team orders lunch, do you get a medium pizza or a large?

    4. Re:Itanium flashbacks by Nikker · · Score: 4, Funny

      You might be under estimating the size of our employee.

      --
      A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
  3. Just one thing... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is it more resistant to icebergs than the previous itanics?

    1. Re:Just one thing... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Funny

      Is it more resistant to icebergs than the previous itanics?

      This one melts right through them.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  4. Ultimate Computer of Failure by pezpunk · · Score: 3, Funny

    ITANIC processor
    RAMBUS memory
    Voodoo5 video card
    i can't think of a hard drive crappy enough ... maybe you could have the OS installed on an external drive connected via USB1.0.

    obviously the OS would be WindowsME.

    --
    i could live a little longer in this prison
    1. Re:Ultimate Computer of Failure by nschubach · · Score: 4, Insightful

      IBM/Hitachi Deskstar AKA: Deathstar

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
  5. Re:Whytanium? by the+linux+geek · · Score: 5, Informative

    Itanium is the #2 high-end UNIX server processor, ahead of SPARC but behind POWER. Itanium systems get between $4bn and $5bn and sales, and are growing. It didn't meet the original goal of taking over the world, but I don't know what parallel universe you live in to think it's a failure.

  6. Re:Isn't it strange... by Olivier+Galibert · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's because the high-end server world accepts level of single-core performance the consumer world doesn't. These processors are not something you want on your PC. You want something with better memory management, way faster I/O with ram and GPU, etc. OTOH, you usually don't care about multi-processor.

    But faster I/O usually means putting more things on the die (hence amd's integrated memory controllers, now followed by Intel) and having larger busses/more efficient protocols, and acting on that means changing the socket. And the north bridge, if one is left. And the memory, for a faster one. You wouldn't get enough speedup from changing the cpu alone with everything else pin-compatible to make it worth it.

    Meanwhile, the itanic spends its time waiting for the ram to answer... but since you put a lot of them in the box, in aggregate they can be useful.

        OG.