SAN FRANCISCO — Intel is taking stock in its
enterprise-focused processors to compete more voraciously against
offerings from IBM and AMD
.
The No. 1 chipmaker said it is initially focusing on five new
dual-core Itanium, Xeon and Pentium processors to handle business needs
from the mainframe to the server to the client. The company’s roadmap announcement highlighted the next-generation of its chip
family at the Intel Developer Forum here this week. The chips are
expected to compete heavily with offerings from IBM and
AMD .
“Right now about half of the market is served by Xeon and compatible
processors. The rest is RISC and Itanium systems,” Gelsinger said. “It’s
no surprise that IBM is behind Power, so we had a decision to make. Do
we serve the rest of the industry and live on IBM’s platforms or do we
focus on our own strategy.”
Names like Smithfield, Yonah, Montecito, Presler and Dempsey may sound
like the starting lineup at a college basketball game, but to Intel they
represent its opportunity in the next two years to introduce the x86
community to the benefits of dual-core technologies.
Smithfield is Intel’s upcoming Pentium D (dual) 800-series chip due this year without its Hyper-Threading technology. Presler is Intel’s first crack at 65-nanometer (nm) process dual-core technology for the Pentium core. Yonah is its Pentium M dual-core mobile processor. Presler and Yonah are both due next year. Montecito is Intel’s long-awaited 90nm Itanium processor, and Dempsey is the
next-generation Xeon based on 65nm.
“We’re not worried about dual-core products overshadowing our
single-core processors,” Pat Gelsinger, former Intel CTO and now its
digital enterprise czar, said during his keynote. “We will continue to make and support both for now.”
OEMs will eventually have 15 different platforms to choose from.
Each is getting outfitted with Intel-produced extensions like
virtualization, memory addressability and I/O management. But Intel is a
little more vague when it comes to exactly how it will mix and match
core CPU capabilities with its attributes.
“It looks like they are setting up different configurations to make
the most of their silicon,” Kevin Krewell, a principal analyst at
semiconductor market research firm In-Stat, told
internetnews.com. “For example, they could have a dual-core chip
based on one die or two die very close together and then add in the
chipset features on top of that.”
Krewell said the result is that Intel could put more cores per socket
and reduce the size of its chips further or increase their performance
by sharing Level 3 cache.
The argument has been the subject of debate between Intel’s engineers,
Gelsinger said. The question being, which is better: a fewer number of
really fat cores or a large quantity of several lighter ones.
“We have to plan for our customers’ socket transitions as we
introduce extensions like our virtualization technology, but we have to
do it in a way that is stable,” Gelsinger said.
Gelsinger also said Intel was transitioning its entire line of
processors toward 64-bit architectures with less reliance on standard
DIMMs and more emphasis on registered DIMMs in 2005 with fully buffered
DIMMs
A Dual Road Ahead
Intel’s dual- and multi-core processors have a long life ahead, Intel
said. The platform, code-named Richford, will include two Intel Itanium
processors, code-named Tukwila, due in 2007, followed by a
future-generation Intel Itanium processor, code-named Poulson.
The first dual-core, multi-processor Xeon, code-named Paxville, is due
in the first quarter of 2006. Intel said it will launch broad seeding
programs to businesses and software developers by the end of this year.
Likewise, the platform, code-named Reidland, will include a
multi-processor Xeon with more than two cores and is due in 2007. Both chips
are expected to appear in servers with four or more chips per box.
For high-volume, dual processor servers, Intel said the platform,
code-named Bensley, will arrive in the first quarter of 2006 and will be
based on the dual-core Intel Xeon processor, code-named Dempsey. Dempsey
will also be used in the platform, code-named Glidewell for high-end
workstations.
For the digital office, the platform, code-named Lyndon, will debut
later in 2005 and will be based on Intel 945/955 chipsets and Pentium 4
processors in the 500-series and 600-series range. The Lyndon platform
will support both Intel active management technology and Intel
virtualization technology.
