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IA64 CPU report: Itanium, McKinley, Clawhammer, Sledgehammer, etc.
AMD
AMD's first 64-bit CPU effort was the server-oriented Opteron, which hit the market in early 2003. By Sept. 2003, a consumer-oriented 64-bit processor dubbed the Athlon 64 followed, as AMD targeted high-end gamers in its first wave of advertising for the "FX-51."
Unlike Intel, AMD is focusing on 64-bit extensions to the existing 32-bit Intel-compatible instruction set. Microsoft has already released a beta version of Windows XP for 64-bit AMD processors, and 64-bit Athlon-optimized betas of Linux releases are available from SuSE, Gentoo, and Debian.Here's a roadmap of AMD's plans. Read the first round of AMD Athlon 64 Reviews. Our advice: wait for the socket format and RAM requirement to be revised -- the current 940-pin chip requires expensive (but highly reliable) ECC RAM; a revised Socket 939 format family of Athlon 64 chips should be released at the beginning of 2Q next year -- and the chip prices to come down to more sane levels.
Intel
Originally slated to appear in the second half of 2000, Intel still isn't shipping Itanium, its first 64-bit processor, in large quantities, but it has sent out engineering samples to a number of its hardware partners -- we saw an early engineering prototype running in an NEC server in July 2000 -- and Microsoft has already released versions of its Whistler Server software for 64-bit processors to beta testers.
Itanium is a chip that was originally code-named Merced. It is Intel's first based on a 64-bit CPU design dubbed IA ("Intel Architecture") 64 and is likely to become widely available in late 2001 or early 2002, when Whistler Server is released. However, the company says it does not expect Merced to become a volume product initially -- that's a euphemism for "it will be fairly expensive."
Indeed, according to early reports, Itanium looks to be a significant leap forward in processing power. According to an article on News.com quoting Stephen Smith, the vice president of Intel's microprocessor products group, the new chip's floating point unit will deliver 20 times the 3D graphics performance of a Pentium Pro's floating point processor and will be three times faster than the one in Tanner.
But there are some who say Itanium's been in development so long, it may well be obsoleted by superior designs before it even hits the market. Indeed, Intel is already working on chips more advanced than Itanium. Next in line will be a processor code-named McKinley. This chip will, Intel says, achieve twice the performance of Itanium and is expected to run at speeds starting around 1 GHz (1000 MHz). We're sure that, too, used to sound like a lot when design on these chips was started.
In a presentation at the Y2K Microprocessor Forum, Stephen Smith, the vice president of Intel's microprocessor products group, described two additional IA-64 architecture devices that will follow. Said Smith, "We will move forward to 0.13-micron technology with a product code-named Madison." Due around 2002, this CPU will be aimed at high-end workstation and server applications. Following it will be an IA-64 CPU currently code-named Deerfield. This chip, Intel says, will be a "price/performance processor."
But don't expect 32-bit Intel architecture designs (sometimes called "IA32") to disappear as soon as the IA64 designs show up. Even as it ramped up to release the Pentium III in Feb. 1999, Intel designers were hard at work on the Coppermine, released early in 2000, and the Pentium 4 -- yet another IA32 processor -- released later in 2000. The Pentium 4, code-named "Willamette," is already available at speeds up to 1.7 gigahertz and may well reach 2.0 GHz or higher by the time its 32-bit architecture runs out of steam.
Intel has published a series of whitepapers on the IA-64 (Itanium), including a compiler overview, an article on IA-64 Floating Point Operations, and an article detailing Transcendental Functions on IA-64.
Compaq
Meanwhile, Compaq has published a white paper comparing the IA-64 architecture to that of its own Alpha product.
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