Intel shows off mobile Itanium solution

This is how Mike Fister, VP and Mr. Itanium, described how Itanium got mobile in San Francisco. Carnegie Mellon university built the monster chip in a monster car, together with a couple of Xeons. The vehicle is an autonomous robot, and that's where you really need that processing powers.

The heavily modified Hummer, originally an Iraq-tested military vehicle, is called "sandstorm", and we did not make that up. It was constructed for a race (see here) from Los Angeles to Las Vegas which takes place March 13.

The task is to build an autonomous ground vehicle that with no human intervention whatsoever makes the 210 miles across the desert in 10 hours or less. The winner earns one million US dollars, though obviously cars like sandstorm cost a lot more.

Carnegie Mellons vehicle uses a number of technologies including laser scanners, GPS, LIDAR and radar to find its way. The main “eyes” of the droid are dual-vision laser scanners in the front, that produce real stereoscopic images. These are proecesed by a bunch of Intel chips inside. Now, the “Redteam” ((http://www.redteamracing.org/)) as they call themselves better wins this race, getting so much attention through Intel, eh?

Intel won anyway already. What we saw in San Fran was arguably the fastest Itanium in the world. That is, if you accept miles per hour as a benchmark for CPUs.