Intel will release a pair of Itanium 2 processors optimized for rack-mounted servers and clusters on Monday as it attempts to expand the chip family"s reach. The Low Voltage Itanium 2, formerly code-named Deerfield, and a scaled-down version of the latest Itanium 2 chip are largely designed to fit inside two-processor servers where cost, space and energy consumption are paramount concerns.
All three factors are important in clusters, which can consist of a few thousand computers strung together for mainframe-class tasks, or in relatively low-cost servers dedicated to a few specific tasks, such as handling authentication for a large Web site. "There have been two-processor (Itanium) systems out there but this allows us to be more effective from a low-power and cost perspective," said Jason Waxman, director of multiplatform marketing at Intel.
Technically, the processor core--the computing brain inside the silicon--of both chips is identical to the core on the 1.5GHz Itanium 2 chip. That chip, formerly code-named Madison, was released in June. Intel, though, has varied the speed and cache size so the two new chips will better fit certain applications, Waxman said.