Montecito is the first Itanium 2 processor with dual cores and Intel’s server processor is truly something out of the ordinary. During DHS06 we got a close-up of the Montecito die, which consists of no less than 1.7 billion transistors whereof a large portion is for the processor’s massive cache at 24MB. The official launch of Montecito will happen in July, but Intel has already started to ship the first processors to its most important clients. This means that it is now updating the server market for both the x86 (Woodcrest) and IA-64 (Montecito) platform. Intel has been boasting its server launch by claiming “This is the summer of servers” during the launch of Woodcrest in New York. It referred to its Woodcrest, Montecito and Tulsa processors.
“Montecito will fill a crucial hole in Intel’s processor lineup, because it will bring the company’s Itanium 2 architecture into the dual-core fold. Itanium 2 is intended for use in ultra-high performance servers, where it vies with IBM’s Power 5 and Sun Microsystem’s UltraSparc 4+ processors, both of which are already dual core.”
Montecito will be known as Itanium 2 9000 and this family will according to Intel offer twice the performance of current Itanium 2 models with only one core. The Itanium 2 9000 series are specified to consume 100W or 130W of power, which doesn’t sound all that bad considering the huge amount of transistors it contains.
