Link: http://evolution.ecomtechnology.com

It took a little longer than expected, but Intel officials have finally released the long-awaited “Tukwila,” the next-generation Itanium processor that offers significant advances in performance and scalability and a host of features that improve everything from virtualization capabilities to reliability.

A week after announcing that they had begun shipping Tukwila—now called the Itanium 9300 series—Intel officials on Feb. 8 officially released the processor, which had been delayed several times over the past couple of years.

However, in the end what businesses will be getting when systems powered by the new Itaniums roll out within the next three months are chips with 2 billion transistors, double the number of cores—from two to four over the current “Montecito” chips—that can run eight instruction threads each, an 800 percent improvement in interconnect bandwidth, 500 percent more memory bandwidth, and up to 700 percent more memory capacity.