Intel Itanium 2 9M

Intel, the world greatest processors manufacturer is issued to release their latest generation of server-class processor, Intel Itanium 2 9M next week. If it is true, than it will be on the same day with the official announcement of the world's fastest supercomputer ever made. Columbia, made by NASA is the first candidate of the world's fastest supercomputer competition.

This new processor will have code name Madison, like the New York Knick's stadion, Madisson Square Garden. Madison will have up to 9MB cache and it will be 3MB higher than the previous version. Intel will also updates their itanium processor products and also suppying dual-processor model which will consume less energy than the previous models.

Columbia was build based on Intel Itanium 2 9M using 130 nanometers fabrication process. By using this new processors, Columbia gained 51.9 terraflops while the current champion (Earth Simulator) which made in Japan gained 35 terraflops.

In the Intel roadmap, they will develop a new processor by using 90 nanometers fabrication process that will be called Montecito and also 65 nanometers called Montvale. It seems that Intel is pushing Itanium's technology to the limit to cover their failure when they released Intel Itanium and was beaten by AMD 64.

What will AMD do with this? We will find out in next few weeks. I'm preety sure that AMD also have some surprises on their roadmap before the end of this year :)