Gservo
29th May 2002, 07:59 PM
Intel has released preliminary performance figures for its upcoming
family of 64-bit Itanium 2 processors, code-named McKinley, and the
company says that the products should experience one and a half to two
times the performance of existing Itanium products. Intel's Itanium
line processes data in 64-bit chunks instead of the 32 bits that
today's Pentium-based processors use. But many people regard the
original Itanium, which debuted with 700MHz and 800MHz models, as a
performance laggard compared with the Pentium and the 64-bit
competition from Sun Microsystems and other companies. Intel says the
new generation of microprocessors will address this concern.
Interestingly, Intel's solution doesn't rely on core processing speeds.
The Itanium 2 will debut at just 1GHz, less than half the nominal speed
of a high-end Pentium 4 processor, but it will offer 3MB of Level 3
(L3) cache and other on-chip performance tweaks. These tweaks provide
as much as two times the performance of the original Itanium and, says
Intel, a 50 percent performance advantage over Sun's fastest processor.
But Intel doesn't address the question of how well the chip stacks up
against the Pentium 4 processor in its Itanium 2 performance figures.
"Megahertz-myth" talk notwithstanding, Intel's most recent Pentium 4
processor, which runs at speeds faster than 2.5GHz, recently set a
performance record in the industry-standard Linpack Benchmark. This
feat represents the first time a mainstream, off-the-shelf processor
has topped this benchmark, which historically has been the domain of
costly specialty processors from Cray, Hitachi, NEC, and other
companies.
family of 64-bit Itanium 2 processors, code-named McKinley, and the
company says that the products should experience one and a half to two
times the performance of existing Itanium products. Intel's Itanium
line processes data in 64-bit chunks instead of the 32 bits that
today's Pentium-based processors use. But many people regard the
original Itanium, which debuted with 700MHz and 800MHz models, as a
performance laggard compared with the Pentium and the 64-bit
competition from Sun Microsystems and other companies. Intel says the
new generation of microprocessors will address this concern.
Interestingly, Intel's solution doesn't rely on core processing speeds.
The Itanium 2 will debut at just 1GHz, less than half the nominal speed
of a high-end Pentium 4 processor, but it will offer 3MB of Level 3
(L3) cache and other on-chip performance tweaks. These tweaks provide
as much as two times the performance of the original Itanium and, says
Intel, a 50 percent performance advantage over Sun's fastest processor.
But Intel doesn't address the question of how well the chip stacks up
against the Pentium 4 processor in its Itanium 2 performance figures.
"Megahertz-myth" talk notwithstanding, Intel's most recent Pentium 4
processor, which runs at speeds faster than 2.5GHz, recently set a
performance record in the industry-standard Linpack Benchmark. This
feat represents the first time a mainstream, off-the-shelf processor
has topped this benchmark, which historically has been the domain of
costly specialty processors from Cray, Hitachi, NEC, and other
companies.