Tech
Release Calendar Overview: Itanium 2 Montecito
Intel's upcoming "Montecito" processor, due sometime in 2005, extends the chipmaker's Itanium family of 64-bit processors.
Product: Itanium 2 Montecito
Release Date: 2005
Intel's upcoming "Montecito" processor, due sometime in 2005, extends the chipmaker's Itanium family of 64-bit processors. Unlike its predecessor, Madison, and the recently released Deerfield chips, which are made using a 0.13 micron process, Montecito will be produced using a 0.09-micron process and will support a multiprocessor core. In other words, there will be two separate logical processors on one physical chip, which Intel says will result in significant performance gains. Like Madison, the processor will retain technology from Compaq's Alpha chip.
Release Date: 2005
Intel's upcoming "Montecito" processor, due sometime in 2005, extends the chipmaker's Itanium family of 64-bit processors. Unlike its predecessor, Madison, and the recently released Deerfield chips, which are made using a 0.13 micron process, Montecito will be produced using a 0.09-micron process and will support a multiprocessor core. In other words, there will be two separate logical processors on one physical chip, which Intel says will result in significant performance gains. Like Madison, the processor will retain technology from Compaq's Alpha chip.
Intel has plans for yet another processor dubbed "Tanglewood", which will include as many as 16 processors on the same chip. At its Developer Forum in September, Intel announced other chips, such as "Prescott" the next version of Pentium 4, and "Dothan," a new version for Pentium M notebooks. The dual-core Montecito is mentioned in the article in passing, with reference to the fact that it is uncertain whether or not it will have added cache memory.
Background on Itanium 2 Montecito With two more generations of Itanium processors due in the next few years, Intel has made a clear commitment to its 64-bit platform based on the Alpha chip technology. An article provides some background perspective on the "Alpha influence" and speculates on Montecito's successor, "Chivano," which is rumored to be released a year later. At the beginning of 2003, Intel changed the release schedule for Montecito, pulling up the expected release date two years, from 2007 to 2005. Jason Waxman, marketing manager for enterprise processors at Intel, told ZDNet dual-core technology was originally planned for the following generation of chips, but manufacturing teams showed that it was possible to mass produce such a processor by 2005.META analyst Brian Richardson, however, didn't paint such a rosy picture for the Itanium 2 family, saying that, "few commercial Windows-based applications exploit 64-bit optimizations."