Intel Refreshes Itanium

Intel is unveiling two new Itanium 2 processors designed for both dual-processor and high-density blade or rack-mount servers.

The more widely anticipated of the two chips is Intel's low-power 1-GHz Itanium 2 processor, code-named Deerfield. Also scheduled for release this week is a new member of Itanium's Madison family, designed for dual-processor use in high-performance and technical computing.

Chip Specs

The Deerfield unit will perform at about the same rate as Intel's older McKinley processors, but at peak performance it will consume about half as much power--an estimated 62 watts--as its predecessor, according to Jason Waxman, Intel's director of multiprocessor platform marketing.

"What that allows you to do is apply these processors for dense, rack-mounted configurations," Waxman says.

The new Madison-class chip is a 1.4-GHz processor with a smaller cache and a lower price tag than the three current members of the Madison family, all of which were released as a follow-up to the McKinley chips last June. Previously, the least expensive member of the Madison line was a 1.3-GHz chip with 3 megabytes of cache, priced at $1338. The new 1.4-GHz processor will have 1.5MB of level 3 cache, and will cost $1172.

Systems Ready

The new chips will begin shipping in a number of systems on Monday.

Among the first out with the new Deerfield CPU are Dell and IBM. Dell is releasing a PowerEdge 3250 server priced at $4999, and IBM is shipping a dual-processor xSeries 382 priced at $8800.

A dual-processor version of Dell's PowerEdge 3250 running the new Madison chips will be available at prices starting at $8499. IBM's dual-processor xSeries 382 with the same chips will start at $9999.

Deerfield will replace the 900-MHz processor that currently powers Hewlett-Packard's ZX2000 workstation. The change will cut about $500 off its current entry-level price of $3300, according to HP.