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SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA -- Intel's much-anticipated multicore processor, code-named Tanglewood, will contain eight processor cores when it ships, sources close to the chip maker have revealed.

The processor is expected to ship in 2006, a year after Intel's first dual-core Itanium, code-named Montecito, the sources say. It will be followed by a 16-core processor, they add.

Uses New Techniques

Intel's dual-core processors are being designed by a group of former Alpha processor developers who were transferred to Intel as part of a 2001 agreement that saw hundreds of developers move to the chip maker from Compaq. The Alpha chip was originally developed by DEC, which Compaq acquired.

These chips will be based on Intel's new 90-nanometer fabrication process and will use the Vanderpool partitioning technology that Intel announced Tuesday at the Intel Developer Forum here.

The Vanderpool initiative separates the processor into two partitions upon which users can run two independent operating systems or applications, according to Paul Otellini, Intel president and chief operating officer. Users will be able to recover more quickly from system crashes and improve the reliability of their PCs, Otellini said in his presentation.

Partitioning technology is available for software on servers, but no one has brought that technology to hardware on desktops yet, Otellini noted. Products featuring Vanderpool will be released within five years, he said.

Few Details

Intel has been reluctant to reveal many details about Tanglewood. To date, the company has confirmed only that the processor exists, that it will contain more than two processor cores, and that it is expected to have more than seven times the performance of Intel's current Itanium processors, code-named Madison.

Keynoting at IDF on Thursday, Mike Fister, the manager of Intel's Enterprise Products Group, declined to give specifics on Tanglewood's processor cores.

"I'm not going to tell you how many more than two. It's a lot more than two," he said.

Intel has promoted Itanium as an alternative to RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) processors such as Sun's UltraSPARC and IBM's Power chips, but the processor has yet to be significantly adopted outside of the realm of high-performance computing, according to Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata.

"Intel's not even really pretending it's being used outside of [high-performance computing] at this point," Haff says.

Wednesday's keynote, which featured videotaped testimony from Itanium users at Sandia National Laboratories and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, did little to dispel that impression. The one Itanium user who appeared at the keynote was Sandra Morris, chief information officer of Intel's own Enterprise Business Group. She said the company is using the 64-bit processors to run an inventory application.

Finding Partners

Industry partners are continuing to support Itanium, which will have 700 applications ported to it by year's end, Fister says. At the keynote, he ran a video of Susan Whitney, the general manager of IBM's XSeries group, announcing plans to introduce a 16-way Itanium 2 system in the same time frame.

For its part, Intel is readying an Itanium-based blade server, which is planned as the third addition to its Intel Server Compute Blade line, Fister says. The first system in this new product line is a dual Xeon processor SBXL52, and Fister says a four-way Xeon system will follow "in another few months or so." The Itanium blade will follow that.

Also in his keynote, Fister unveiled a new software framework designed to make it easier for system vendors to develop and port BIOS. Called the Intel Platform Innovation Framework for Extensible Firmware Interface, the technology will be handed over to a special interest group that will manage its development some time in the next quarter, according to Intel.

The framework, which is expected to take four to five years before it is widely adopted, will speed up driver development for Intel systems because it uses the C programming language, Fister said.

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