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Intel is shipping an updated version of its dual-core Itanium 2 server processor, called Montvale. The successor to the Montecito chip that launched in the summer of 2006, Montvale sports a number of improvements over its predecessor. Produced on Intel’s venerable 90nm process, the seven-member Montvale line (six dual-core parts and one single-core) debuts at speeds of 1.42GHz to 1.66GHz.


Made using the same 90-nanometer (nm) process technology used to produce the existing Itanium 2 9000 series of processors, Montvale offers incremental improvements, including a faster front-side bus on some models and features that lower power consumption in certain situations and improve reliability. Itanium 2 processors are designed for high-end servers mainly used in specialized applications, such as finance and banking. The faster front-side bus and higher clock speeds in the 9100 series still offer respectable performance gains of around 19 percent over the 9000 series.

In addition to core-level lockstep and the 667MHz FSB, Montvale’s third new feature is demand-based switching (DBS). DBS is the Itanium version of Intel’s SpeedStep technology, which throttles down the processor’s clockspeed and voltage during idle periods in order to reduce power consumption.

Beyond Montvale, Intel is working on three future versions of Itanium. Tukwila, which will be manufactured using a 65-nm process and pack four processor cores on a single silicon die, will be released next year, Toh said. Tukwila will be followed by Poulson, a 32-nm chip that uses a new processor micro-architecture, and then a chip called Kittson.