TechLuver.com

Santa Clara, CA–Oct 31, ‘07–Underscoring strong momentum and industry support, Intel Corporation today unveiled Dual-Core Intel Itanium Processor 9100 series processors. Built for managing high-end applications and armed with advanced features that improve reliability and reduce power consumption, the 9100 series accentuates the ongoing shift from proprietary RISC products to the choice offered by Itanium-based servers. The 9100 series represents the sixth generation of Itanium chips, with three future generations under development.

The Itanium platform’s mission-critical support is strengthened by a new feature called Core Level Lock-Step that improves the data integrity and reliability of applications by eliminating undetected errors in the core. Core Level Lock-Step joins existing Socket Level Lock-Step technology to deliver greater reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) by guaranteeing that calculation results are consistent among the cores and sockets.

Another new feature, Demand Based Switching (DBS), reduces server power consumption during low utilization periods, which can result in energy cost savings.

The 9100 series features clock speed of up to 1.66 GHz and 667 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB) within a 104W power envelope. A three-load bus – two processors and a chipset on the same bus - provides increased bandwidth for enterprise and high-performance computing tasks.

“The Itanium ecosystem continues to grow as customers choose industry standard platforms supported by leading system OEMs that provide them with the broadest choice of applications.” said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager, Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group.

“Microsoft continues to be a committed supporter of the Itanium architecture, and with the 9100 series our enterprise customers can run even more highly scalable and reliable databases and business applications,” said Bill Laing, general manager, Windows Server Division at Microsoft. “Supporting the Demand-Based Switching feature on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-Based Systems will help businesses better manage power consumption and improve the efficiency of their enterprise operations.”

Pricing and availability

Six Intel dual-core and a single-core Itanium 9100 series processors are shipping today, with prices ranging from $696 to $3,692 depending on order volume, features and performance. Parts supporting Core level Lock-Step will begin shipping in the first quarter of 2008. More at Intel