Intel ships Montvale itanics

INTEL LETS SLIP its dual-core Itanium 2 server processor, Montvale, today.

The chip is built using the ancient 90-nanomete process technology and offers a few improvements over its predecessor, the 9000 series. Montvale adopts the moniker Itanium 2 9100 series.

Some Montvale 9100s run a bit quicker than 9000s but sport the same amount of on-chip cache. This, along with a faster front-side bus offer performance gains of around 19 per cent over the 9000 series, Intel reckons.

The 9100 series features clock speed of up to 1.66 GHz and 667 MHz Front Side Bus within a 104W power envelope. A three-load bus – two processors and a chipset on the same bus - provides increased bandwidth for enterprise and high-performance computing tasks.

The 9100 chips have an 'M' in their model numbers to mark them out from those using the slower 533MHz clock speed, which are marked with an 'N.'

The 9100 series represents the sixth generation of Itanium chips, and Chipzilla says there are three future generations under development.

The firm is shipping six dual-core and one single-core Itanium 9100 processors today. Lock step parts will begin shipping in the first quarter of 2008. Prices range from $650 to $3,450 depending on how many you buy and how good you want them to be. µ