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No surprise, but just for you Intel lovers...
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/12992266.htm
Intel's new Itanium on hold
SERVER CHIP DELAYED UNTIL MID-2006 TO BOLSTER QUALITY CONTROL
By Dean Takahashi
Mercury News
Hurting its prospects in the market for high-end server chips, Intel said Monday that it has delayed the launch of its newest Itanium microprocessor until the middle of 2006.
The world's biggest chip maker said the chip, code-named Montecito, had to be delayed from early 2006 until mid-2006 to ensure it fixes quality problems.
""I don't see this as a crushing delay, but it certainly is embarrassing,'' said Jonathan Eunice, an analyst at market analyst firm Illuminata. ""It sounds like a four- to five-month delay, and that's not a disastrous day for Intel.''
The delay is reminiscent of 2004, when Intel canceled a number of chips because of chip design problems. Those delays tarnished the company's reputation and forced it to redouble its focus on chip design.
Server customers are much more particular than home users because they use chips such as Itanium in servers that are part of corporate data centers that handle millions of transactions a day. Servers are the large computers that run networks, power Web sites, and store massive amounts of data.
Intel spokesman William Giles said Montecito would still deliver twice the performance over Intel's current-generation Itanium chip. Montecito is one of the most complicated chips ever made because it has two processors on a single chip and uses 1.8 billion transistors, compared with 169 million transistors in Intel's fastest Pentium 4 for consumers.
Eunice said the delay would help Intel's rivals, including IBM's Power family of microprocessors and Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron chips. Intel has aimed Itanium at challenging the highest-end server chips from IBM and Sun Microsystems.
Lisa Graff, general manager of Intel's high-end server line, recently said Itanium is on schedule in terms of Intel's strategy to compete against its high-end rivals. More than half of the Fortune 100 companies use Itanium servers, up from less than 20 percent about 18 months ago, she said.
Many rivals have called Itanium a failure because Intel and Hewlett-Packard originally had much bigger ambitions for the jointly designed project. Intel acknowledges the chip has taken off more slowly than anticipated, but it contends that competitors are disappearing.
But AMD's Opteron chip, launched in 2003, has stolen a lot of momentum from Itanium, Eunice said. He interpreted another move Intel made Monday as a response to AMD. Giles said Intel is canceling one Xeon server chip, code-named Whitefield, due in 2007. Intel is replacing that chip with Tigerton, also due in 2007, with features that make it more competitive with AMD's Opteron, Eunice said.
Giles said Tigerton will exploit a new method of connecting chips together in servers that use multiple microprocessors.
In other news, Intel will invest $650 million in a chip factory in New Mexico. Part of the reason is a tax break Intel received by bringing back $6 billion in cash from overseas sales. The investment will create 300 manufacturing jobs.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/12992266.htm
Intel's new Itanium on hold
SERVER CHIP DELAYED UNTIL MID-2006 TO BOLSTER QUALITY CONTROL
By Dean Takahashi
Mercury News
Hurting its prospects in the market for high-end server chips, Intel said Monday that it has delayed the launch of its newest Itanium microprocessor until the middle of 2006.
The world's biggest chip maker said the chip, code-named Montecito, had to be delayed from early 2006 until mid-2006 to ensure it fixes quality problems.
""I don't see this as a crushing delay, but it certainly is embarrassing,'' said Jonathan Eunice, an analyst at market analyst firm Illuminata. ""It sounds like a four- to five-month delay, and that's not a disastrous day for Intel.''
The delay is reminiscent of 2004, when Intel canceled a number of chips because of chip design problems. Those delays tarnished the company's reputation and forced it to redouble its focus on chip design.
Server customers are much more particular than home users because they use chips such as Itanium in servers that are part of corporate data centers that handle millions of transactions a day. Servers are the large computers that run networks, power Web sites, and store massive amounts of data.
Intel spokesman William Giles said Montecito would still deliver twice the performance over Intel's current-generation Itanium chip. Montecito is one of the most complicated chips ever made because it has two processors on a single chip and uses 1.8 billion transistors, compared with 169 million transistors in Intel's fastest Pentium 4 for consumers.
Eunice said the delay would help Intel's rivals, including IBM's Power family of microprocessors and Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron chips. Intel has aimed Itanium at challenging the highest-end server chips from IBM and Sun Microsystems.
Lisa Graff, general manager of Intel's high-end server line, recently said Itanium is on schedule in terms of Intel's strategy to compete against its high-end rivals. More than half of the Fortune 100 companies use Itanium servers, up from less than 20 percent about 18 months ago, she said.
Many rivals have called Itanium a failure because Intel and Hewlett-Packard originally had much bigger ambitions for the jointly designed project. Intel acknowledges the chip has taken off more slowly than anticipated, but it contends that competitors are disappearing.
But AMD's Opteron chip, launched in 2003, has stolen a lot of momentum from Itanium, Eunice said. He interpreted another move Intel made Monday as a response to AMD. Giles said Intel is canceling one Xeon server chip, code-named Whitefield, due in 2007. Intel is replacing that chip with Tigerton, also due in 2007, with features that make it more competitive with AMD's Opteron, Eunice said.
Giles said Tigerton will exploit a new method of connecting chips together in servers that use multiple microprocessors.
In other news, Intel will invest $650 million in a chip factory in New Mexico. Part of the reason is a tax break Intel received by bringing back $6 billion in cash from overseas sales. The investment will create 300 manufacturing jobs.
