Intel Montecito dual core chip slated for fourth quarter

INTEL CONTINUES to keep its nose to the grindstone on its re-positioned Itanium microprocessor, with a number of introductions of upgrades slated for this year.

The chip company will introduce an Itanium 2 with 9MB of cache in the third quarter and using the 667MHz front side bus (FSB), according to recent roadmaps seen by the INQ.

But it won't be until the fourth quarter of this year that it releases its Montecito Itanium CPU. This dual core, multi-threading version will support Vanderpool virtualisation, demand based switching, and "Foxton" and "Pellston" technologies.

Pellston allows for cache errors to be handled without system reboots, while Foxton is a frequency management technology.

Montecito is aimed at the four way and eight way markets, and is now positioned as a "RISC" replacement chip. It will support both 533MHz and 667MHz buses.

Millington is slated for the same timeframe, supporting 400, 533, and 667MHz buses. It has a similar set of associated technologies. Millington is aimed at two way systems.

Intel will also produce a low voltage (LV) Millington supporting a 400MHz bus.

Intel has not yet decided how much cache will go on the Millingtons and the Montecito Itaniums - the rumour is that we will eventually see one monster with a startling 23MB of cache, but there's no sighting of that yet.

The Millingtons and Montecitos, like the Madisons, use the E8870 chipset, supporting 128GB of DDR 200 memory, and processors up to 512. There's no S-ATA support, or support for PCI Express - at least not yet.

Intel also now appears to have firmed up its plans to put Pentium Ms into the "ultra dense" space, launching a 27W 760 and a 21W Pentium M, as well as a 10W 738 - all using the E7520 chipset - during the second quarter of this year.

Intel hasn't priced up Millingtons or Montecito processors yet. That's a way off. µ