Intel Xeon and Itanium plans

As many know, Intel took a gamble on the Itanium when it was released several years ago. Using a then uncommon reduced instruction set computing (RISC) architecture left the majority of the industry unsure of its practicality in an x86-dominated world. Today however, the Itanium family brings in roughly $3.5 billion per annun for Intel.

Diane Bryant, vice president of Intel's enterprise group, revealed several details that indicated Intel will push forward with Itanium development for the foreseeable future.

Currently, Intel's flagship Itanium 2 processor is the Montecito core. Intel announced Montecito last July, marking the company's first dual-core enterprise and mainframe processor. Until now, Montecito ran on a 533MHz front-side bus but will soon make the transition a 667MHz front-side bus processor in Q4 2007, dubbed Montvale. According to Bryant, Montvale will consist of minor updates, improving bus speed but also improving overall stability..