Intel Unveils Next Gen Itanium Processor 169
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."
Itanium flashbacks (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone else cringe when they here Itanium? The early chips still give me nightmares.
Re:Ultimate Computer of Failure (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM/Hitachi Deskstar AKA: Deathstar
Re:Isn't it strange... (Score:4, 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.