Intel's Latest and Last Itanium Uniprocessor

Intel announced two model of Itanium 64-bit high-end microprocessors. The front-side bus in the two new Itanium 2 processors will run at 667 MHz, enabling 10.6 gigabits of data per second to be transferred between the CPU and its memory and core-logic chipset. The 400 MHz bus on the current Itanium 2 processors supports a maximum rate of 6.4 Gbits of data per second. On-chip Level 3 cache of 24 MB makes this generation of Inanium's better suited to memory-intensive database and computational chores.

Both of new Itanium 2 devices run at clock speeds of 1.66 GHz; one model comes with 6 MB of cache, the other with 9 MB. The former will sell for $2,194 in quantities of 1,000 or more, the latter for $4,655.

The next generation of Itaniums will feature dual processors early next year. HP is the largest OEM customer for Itaniums, basing its Integrity line on the chips. Hitachi plans to use the processors in its upcoming BladeSymphony servers, according to an Intel statement.

IBM's Power and Intel's Itanium are getting most of the R&D dollars for high-end microprocessors these days.