Intel Tukwila has 2 billion transistors

Posted on Monday, February 04 2008 @ 16:13 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck

Intel has unveiled the quad-core Itanium Tukwila processor, this is the first chip to feature more than 2 billion transistors. The Tukwila is clocked at 2GHz and will be available in the second half of this year.

The new Tukwila has twice as much performance as a Itanium Montvale 9100 series processor while consuming only 25% more power.

Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer, described the new Itanium processor commenting on the advantages of moving to the quad-core system.

"By so doing we double the performance [compared to the 9100 Montvale] when measured on an enterprise standard benchmarks ... but with only a 25 percent increase in power."

The Tukwila processor is also expected to have 30MB of cache, along with Reliability, Availability, Serviceability (RAS) features including a circuit design that has been hardened to resist soft errors -- which reduces the probability of a system crash.

Like its predecessor, the new Tukwila Itanium processor will be aimed at the enterprise and server space.

About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.

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