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  • heymrdj - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link

    This looks a bit stronger than rumors were first hinting at. Can't wait to see some tests run when they come out. Would love to put a couple of them to use if some of my bigger clients could afford them.
  • Lord 666 - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link

    But can it run Crysis?
  • AmdInside - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link

    I remember when it used to be "but can it run Quake". Yeah, I'm old.
  • Kristian Vättö - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link

    Well, Crysis is coded for x86 so it can't ;-)
  • ImSpartacus - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link

    I don't think these are x86 processors.
  • gevorg - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link

    Saving the 22nm fabs for the more lucrative Ivy Bridge market?
  • ImSpartacus - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link

    That might be part of the reason, but I think Intel just wants to keep yields up for those big dies (dice?). The mature 32nm process probably helps yields.
  • Kristian Vättö - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link

    Enterprise market is always behind in this category. The complexity of Ivy Bridge or consumer chips in general is nothing compared to these chips. That requires more money and time, and there is absolutely no room for flaws in the final product when your clients are possibly shoveling hundreds of millions for these chips.

    For example Westmere-EX came a lot later than original Westmere and the same is happening with Sandy Bridge-E.
  • James5mith - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link

    "That requires more money and time, and there is absolutely no room for flaws in the final product when your clients are possibly shoveling hundreds of millions >>>of dollars<<< for these chips."

    Fixed that for ya. ;)

    Seriously though, the hundreds of millions of units would be the consumer chips and lower end x86 server chips. I would be surprised if Itanium has shipped 100 million chips since the original Merced design. High end server CPU's aren't about volume, they are about insane profit margins on a very small number of chips.
  • Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link

    I meant dollars (or money in general), not units. Maybe I should have been more clear, but it was already late night! :P
  • silverblue - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link

    What will this mean for HP's "civil lawsuit against Oracle for discontinuing software development on Intel's Itanium processor platform" (taken from http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2079545/hp-sue... )? Oracle swears that Intel is ending Itanium, but HP will use this news in an effort to boost their legal case.
  • Belard - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link

    Yeah... considering that HP doesn't actually develop or invent anything. And who else Ben works with such chips.
  • Hector2 - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link

    Intel is going to double the number of Core, substantially increase the L3 Cache, undoubtedly increase the frequency, increase the transistor count by 50% and still knock off ~25% of the chip area.

    I'm really curious about the power, but going to 32nm and reducing the chip size ought to decrease that quite a bit as well.
  • Arnulf - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link

    So RMS Itanic will be going down in a blaze of glory. A fitting end for the project that has probably devoured as much money as it has made.
  • Holly - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link

    Doubt the money part would be that simple... I am quite convinced smaller of bigger parts of Itaniums logic is running in these days mainstream Intel CPUs by recycling/finalizing the logic developed for Itaniums.
  • Hector2 - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - link

    This seems like a pretty significant effort. What was Oracle smoking when they said Intel wouldn't be investing in it anymore ?

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