Intel ships 64-bit chip to developers
By Ken Popovich, ZDNet
Dec 07, 1999

The development of Intel Corp.'s new 64-bit Itanium processor has reached a major milestone with the shipment of prototype systems to developers, according to a company official. In addition, early test results show the new processor exceeding performance predictions.

"I can't underestimate the magnitude of the accomplishment of being able to deliver development systems for this within three months of first silicon [i.e., building an initial sample chip]," said Ron Curry, director of marketing for Intel's I-64 processing division. "I think that's a really strong indicator of how things are going."

Itanium is the Santa Clara, Calif., company's first 64-bit processor, meaning it can processes data in chunks of 64 bits. Xeon, Intel's current chip marketed to workstations and servers, is a 32-bit processor.

Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is planning to market Itanium for high-end systems, particularly Internet servers that typically cost more than $100,000. The chip is due in commercial volume by the middle of next year.

Hardware and software developers will use the prototype systems to help them design products supporting Itanium-based machines. By the end of December, Intel will have shipped hundreds of the prototypes to developers, Curry said. Starting in January, "we will be shipping several thousands of these to developers all around the world."

Big boost expected for SSL
Curry offered few details about the design of the prototypes. "These systems we are delivering are truly engineering prototype systems, they pretty much look like something you would expect to see in a lab," he said.

But while he stressed that the prototypes were designed for "testing functionality" and not performance, Curry did say early tests show the processor performing better than the company's estimates.

"Now that we have actual hardware to start running software traces on, our performance estimates are improving because we are actually seeing better-than-expected results," Curry said.

"Particularly on some things, like SSL, the security algorithm that all the business sites use, Itanium -- based on our current estimates -- will be able to do it 10 times faster than its peers in the year 2000 when it goes into production," he said. "That will really help with increasing throughput on business sites that have a lot of transactions."

Itanium will be able to process up to six instructions in parallel per clock cycle and feature Level 1 and Level 2 cache integrated into the chip and Level 3 (featuring 4MB of error-correcting memory) located inside the cartridge.

The chip also includes two floating point units and is capable of performing at up to six gigaflops (six billion operations) per second. FPUs handle mathematical calculations and are used heavily by graphics applications.

Although the clock speed on the Itanium prototypes is only in the 500MHz to 600MHz range, Curry said the final clock speed "will be much higher than that" when Itanium goes into final production next year. "Our focus here [for the prototypes] is on software development, not performance testing."

What's up next
While Intel is "extremely pleased" with test results so far, Curry said the company has plenty of work still to do.

"The security and floating point are kind of low-hanging fruit that we needed to start looking at. The other aspects of performance we'll have to do more measurements on more finely tuned systems to get a better handle on," he said. "But all indications are that we will exceed our projections by a substantial amount."

With the shipment of prototypes, development of the new processor remains on track. Over the next six to nine months, Intel is expected to make several more announcements leading up to the final introduction of the processor.

In the first half of next year, Intel will officially release a programmers' reference manual for Itanium. In addition, developers working on the Trillian project -- an effort to create a Linux system for the 64-bit processor -- will release their work as open source.

In the second quarter, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HWP) and Novell Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) will release betas of their operating systems and tools for Itanium.

See Also:
Intel developing new integrated chip
Sun Boots Solaris on Itanium Hardware
Intel names IA-64 processor 'Itanium'

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