New Intel Itanium 2 platforms make strides from hotels to space

These new processors are the next step towards the goal of using computing platforms based on industry standards to gain more market segment share from the $20 billion proprietary RISC market.

More than 70 OEMs are now shipping Itanium-based systems. The platform currently supports a choice of five leading operating systems and a vast suite of software applications, increasing the choice and flexibility of Itanium-based solutions for IT managers worldwide.

"This new introduction to the Intel Itanium 2 processor line up brings new options and capabilities to enterprises in sectors such as energy and finance in the Middle East" said Ferhad Patel, Intel's Market Development Manager, Middle East and North Africa, "We are planning to work closely with our fellow travelers and customers to play a role in utilizing these new capabilities to build technology solutions that address the needs of our customers in the Middle East."

The Itanium 2 platform provides excellent computing advantages for transaction processing, data warehousing, business intelligence, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and high performance computing. This platform complements Intel® Xeon™ processors with Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology (Intel EM64T) which are targeted at general purpose enterprise applications such as Web, workgroup, file, print, infrastructure, and application logic giving IT managers end-to-end 64-bit computing solutions.

"The multi-billion dollar RISC market segment is ripe for the Intel approach of delivering outstanding performance, choice of systems and software at more affordable price points," said Abhi Talwalkar, vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Platforms Group at Intel. "Today's enhancements to the Itanium 2 processor lineup will further support customer migration away from costly, proprietary systems."

Already, the new Itanium 2 processors are being deployed for mission-critical applications including powering one of the world's fastest supercomputer at NASA, a SGI Altix* system consisting of 10,240 Itanium 2 processors running the Linux operating system. Additionally, MGM MIRAGE, a leading and respected hotel, has deployed a Unisys system with 16 Itanium 2 processors for a data-warehousing project based upon Microsoft Windows* Server 2003 and Microsoft SQL* Server 2000.

"Unisys ES7000* servers with Itanium 2 processors meet our needs for the massive data crunching and analysis we do on our customer data because of the reliability features and scalability they deliver for future growth," said Glenn Bonner, CIO for MGM MIRAGE.
The Bank of New York has deployed a four-way HP Integrity-based Itanium 2 processor server running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 as part of a global equity trading solution that enables them to manage growth in business volume and address increasing transaction complexities.

"We removed a critical hurdle to business growth and achieved 100 percent hardware ROI within three months by deploying our trading system on the Itanium 2 processor-based HP Integrity Servers running Windows," said Joseph Weisbord, chief technology officer, G-Trade Services Ltd, a broker-dealer subsidiary of The Bank of New York. "HP Integrity servers deliver substantial price performance benefits compared to proprietary RISC solutions and provide a rock solid foundation for business-critical applications like our 24-by-7 global equity trading platform."

Intel is refreshing the Itanium 2 product line with six new processors that deliver performance increases of 15 percent for database transaction processing and up to 35 percent for overall integer and floating point performance.2 The new processors include the Itanium 2 processor MP at 1.60 GHz with 9 MB level three (L3) cache at 400 MHz front side bus (FSB) for business critical applications such as database and ERP. Also available are the Itanium 2 processor MP at 1.60 GHz with 6 MB of L3 cache and the Itanium 2 processor MP at 1.50 GHz with 4 MB of L3 cache. A HP Integrity Superdome based on the new processors is the first to achieve the 100,000 sales and distribution users milestone on the SAP SD 3-tier benchmark.3

The Itanium 2 processor DP at 1.60 GHz with 3 MB L3 cache at 400 and 533 MHz FSB delivers outstanding price performance for high performance computing clusters and front-end enterprise systems. The new processor also delivers outstanding floating point performance per compute node, resulting in up to 40 percent better price per gigaflops (billion calculations per second), a measure of price-performance for compute-intensive workloads, over RISC-based systems.

The Itanium 2 processor LV at 1.30 GHz with 3 MB of L3 cache at only 62 watts is price and power optimized for low cost systems and dense form factors such as blade servers. Intel also offers Itanium-based server platforms based on these new processors to systems builders and product integrators.

A wide range of Itanium 2 processor systems ranging from two-way to 512-way systems are available from system manufacturers worldwide including Bull, Dell, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Siemens, HP, Hitachi, IBM, Kraftway, Lenovo, NEC, Maxdata, Optimus, Samsung, SGI, and Unisys.