Intel claims Itanium Montecito fastest FP on block

CHIP GIANT INTEL said that its forthcoming Montecito dual core Itanium in a four processor, dual core configuration will thrash a comparable four way RISC system by 60 per cent.

Intel said it based this figure on internal testing using the LINPACK benchmark. This measures floating point performance and the config Intel tested exceeded 45 GFLOPS.

The previous record, said Intel, was 27.5 GFLOPS for an IBM pSeries RS/6000 system shown in a PDF, here.

Phil Brace, general manager of the Intel server group, said: "We are approaching the ability to reach a teraflop in as few as a 20 server system cluster."

Intel also claims Montecito based systems will consume twenty per cent less power because the chip uses technologies that power manage better. µ