Which CPU Will Have ~2 Billion Transistors?
The answer of course is Intel's upcoming Itanium brand CPU codenamed Tukwila.
While we tend to focus a lot of our attention on the desktop market, we cannot help but be impressed by server CPUs when we hear figures like 2 billion transistors or 30 MB of on-die cache that make up a good portion of those transistors.
“The new Itanium processor will be built on the company’s 65-nanometer manufacturing process and will also be one of the first Intel chips to use the company’s QuickPath interconnect technology—an integrated memory controller. (Advanced Micro Devices already uses an integrated memory controller with its x86 Opteron processors.)”
Perhaps the most overlooked benefit of using Intel's QPI technology is that it will allow Itaniums and Xeons to plug into the same sockets. Word on the street is that Tukwila, due late this year, could very well be socket interoperable with server motherboards designed for the upcoming Nehalem CPUs.
While we tend to focus a lot of our attention on the desktop market, we cannot help but be impressed by server CPUs when we hear figures like 2 billion transistors or 30 MB of on-die cache that make up a good portion of those transistors.
“The new Itanium processor will be built on the company’s 65-nanometer manufacturing process and will also be one of the first Intel chips to use the company’s QuickPath interconnect technology—an integrated memory controller. (Advanced Micro Devices already uses an integrated memory controller with its x86 Opteron processors.)”
Perhaps the most overlooked benefit of using Intel's QPI technology is that it will allow Itaniums and Xeons to plug into the same sockets. Word on the street is that Tukwila, due late this year, could very well be socket interoperable with server motherboards designed for the upcoming Nehalem CPUs.
