The Itanium 9300 series, code-named ''Tukwila'', is the generation of

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

Itanium Itanium ( ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Launched in June 2001, Intel marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance computin ...

processor family following Itanium 2 and Montecito. It was released on 8 February 2010. It utilizes both multiple

processor core A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...

s (

multi-core A multi-core processor is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit with two or more separate processing units, called cores, each of which reads and executes program instructions. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions (such a ...

) and SMT techniques. The engineers said to be working on this project were from the

DEC Alpha Alpha (original name Alpha AXP) is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Alpha was designed to replace 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computers ...

project, specifically those who worked on the

Alpha 21464 The Alpha 21464 is an unfinished microprocessor that implements the Alpha instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation and later by Compaq after it acquired Digital. The microprocessor was also known as EV8 (codenam ...

(EV8), which was focused on SMT. Named for the city of

Tukwila, Washington Tukwila ( ) is a suburban city in King County, Washington, United States, located immediately to the south of Seattle. The population was 21,798 at the 2020 census. Tukwila is a community of communities, with residents of many diverse origin ...

, Tukwila was previously code-named ''Tanglewood''. The original name is also used by the

Tanglewood music festival The Tanglewood Music Festival is a music festival held every summer on the Tanglewood estate in Stockbridge and Lenox in the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts. The festival consists of a series of concerts, including symphonic music, ch ...

, and Intel renamed the project in late 2003. The processor has two to four cores per die and up to 24 MB L3 of on-die cache. They are the first batch of processors to contain more than 2 billion

transistors upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch e ...

on a single die. This total is made up as follows: * core

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...

— 430 million * system interface — 157 million * L3 cache — 1,420 million * I/O logic — 39 million * chip total — 2.046 billion Die size is 21.5×32.5 mm or 698.75 mm².

Xeon compatibility

It was originally stated that Tukwila and its associated chipset would bring socket compatibility between Intel's

Xeon Xeon ( ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, server, and embedded system markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon processors are based on the same arc ...

and Itanium processors, by introducing a new interconnect called

Intel QuickPath Interconnect The Intel QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) is a point-to-point microprocessor, processor electrical connection, interconnect developed by Intel which replaced the front-side bus (FSB) in Xeon, Itanium, and certain desktop platforms starting in 2008. I ...

(QuickPath, previously known as Common System Interface or CSI). This ultimate endeavor would help reduce product development costs for both Intel and its partners, by allowing for greater reuse of components and manufacturing processes. Tukwila is reported to have four "full" QuickPath links and two "half" links. Whitefield, the first Xeon processor to feature QuickPath, suffered significant project delays and was cancelled. The first Xeon MP processor to feature QuickPath is

Beckton Beckton is a suburb in east London, England, located east of Charing Cross and part of the London Borough of Newham. Adjacent to the River Thames, the area consisted of unpopulated marshland known as the East Ham Levels in the parishes of Bark ...

. The released Itanium 9300-series processors are using a separate socket, LGA 1248, which is incompatible with Xeon processors and motherboards.

Comparison table

Successor

The successor is code-named ''

Poulson Poulson may refer to: * Poulson (surname) * Poulson, Virginia * Poulson (processor), the codename of Intel's Itanium 9500 processor series See also * Polson (disambiguation) * Poulsen, a surname {{disambiguation ...

''. It was initially slated for a Q4 2009 release and said to have over four cores, most likely eight. In 2009 an Intel representative stated that Intel would maintain a two-year development cycle for Itanium, implying Poulson would be released in Q1 2012.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tukwila (Processor) Intel microprocessors Very long instruction word computing