Intel is planning to launch its new quad-core Itanium processor “Tukwila” before the end of the year. During the Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, Intel decided to release bits of information on the new server processor. Tukwila will become the first microprocessor with more than 2 billion transistors, which is even more impressive when you find out that it’s made with the 65nm process instead of the new 45nm flavor. Intel’s chief technology officer Justin Rattner announced that Itanium may skip 45nm and go directly to 32nm the next time Intel updates the series.
Intel claims that the new Itanium processor will sport twice the performance as the current dual-core Montvale Itanium 9100 series, while only consuming 130W, which is just 25% more. The chip itself is not that different from Montvale, but will use the new QuickPath Interface.
The processor houses two integrated memory controller and will scale up to at least 2GHz and is capable of handling up to eight threads simultaneously. With 30MB integrated cache it’s not that odd that the total transistor count breaks 2 billion.
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