What the heck is Itanium Processor

[oc jason]

and why is it $3310 on pricewatch-how powerful is it.

[Carmine_Paterno]

It is intel's new 64-bit processor.

I don;t think that company really has it tho.

[Kryten]

It has 2 MB of onboard cache probably some of the reason the price is so high (besides Intels greed)

[Me]

Intel can have my Super nuts in their mouth processor for less than 3000 bucks , Comes complete with 128 bits of power. Plus it can beat any supercomputer today and their isnt one chess player on Earth who has defeated this mighty chip.

[lemmingboy]

What are you guys talking about? Itanium is cheap!!! My dog Itaniums all over the place. If anyone wants some Itanium drop me an e-mail, I will send you some in a box. Wait I could start a company doing that and call it Dell. Crap in a pretty cardboard box. You get speakers a monitor, keyboard and mouse plus all the crap you want for only $799. Dang it you even get a free mouse pad. Wait!!! IDEA!!! If I add pretty colors we can call it an IMAC.

Sorry just saw the latest Dell commercial and needed to vent.

Seriously though, it is Intels 64-bit processor based on the new IA-64 architecture they are tring to push. I saw some 32-bit emulation benchmarks on it and it got smoked by a P-150. Now that was a 700MHz version, but give me a brake!!! The Sledgehammer (AMD's 64-bit Processor) will sledge it into the ground.

[oc jason]

Me (Jul 22, 2001 10:29 p.m.):
Intel can have my Super nuts in their mouth processor for less than 3000 bucks , Comes complete with 128 bits of power. Plus it can beat any supercomputer today and their isnt one chess player on Earth who has defeated this mighty chip.


that my friend was funny- thanks i needed to read this comic when i got home from work --LOL

[castle lager fan]

Itanium is a server and workstation based processor. 64 bit windows, linux and Unix's. It's not meant to be running 32 bit apps like in PC's. When used in 64 bit apps and OS's it's still slow compared to other RISC chips. BUT remember it's the first release for IA-64 architecture!! It's meant for ISV's (Independant software vendors) for development for new 64 bit IA64 APPS!! NOT A PC PROCESSOR!!

For those of you that's technically minded. It uses EPIC (explicit parrallel instruction computing) instread of IA32(known as x86) whihc uses CISC(Complex instruction set computing) or other 64 bit architectures (HP PA-RISC, SUn's Ultrasparc) which uses RISC(reduced instruction set computing).

In short the OS and apps must be developed to make use of the architecture, if not performance sucks!! In the case of IA-64 if this is done, the Itanium at 800 MHz beats an Athlon at 1.4 GHz by a margin of 40-50% on floating point execution. Unfotunately Intel dont give integer performance. SO I guess that still needs some work.

In short it's a totally new way of computing, which is still under development. It's not meant for PCs and will perform very bad for current apps. New high end apps (workstation and server) will start changing by next year. Look at tpc.org and spec.org by the end of 2002 beginning 2003!

[OC-Master]

The Intel Itanium processor is 4X faster than a 1GHz Pentium3 when compared 800MHz IA-64 vs 1GHz P3.

The reason for all this speed is that the Itanium processor has a 64-bit bus which doubles the throughput bandwidth. But not just that, the 64-bit technology also uses new software code which gives it another boost in performance. AMD will have the Clawhammer and Sledgehammer to compete against this small beast.

A newer version of the Itanium processor is coming out this fall which will have a 400MHz bus and not a 133MHz bus.

Anyways, Clawhammer will kick butt.

Clawhammer,
.13micron technology
512KB Full Speed L2
533MHz BUS (133x4)
2266MHz~and so on.

The Sledgehammer will be basically the same exept MP support and like 2MB of cache for server use.

[castle lager fan]

Does anybody know if AMD is going to buy licenses for EPIC so the IA64 and 64 bit AMD chips will be compatible? I know AMD is doing it for x86 (ie CISC IA32. For every processor AMD sells Intel does get a cut!! Small world.

I hope so, cause then new software will run on both. If not we are going to be in a world of hurt with imcompatible software, etc.

[TRANCER24]

I just had to say this. Intel is overpriced junk...

Drink beer then you will come to the same thinking as me and be happy :)

[netnic30]

As far as I know AMD and Intel are going in two different directions i.e. 64 bit code for the newer AMD processors will not run on 64 bit Intel processors.

Raw throughput numbers will change as real speed has more to do with how good the compilers are at code generation. The ability to do branch prediction correctly and preventing pipeline stalls.