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Itanium
processors
Processing
the enterprise
The
Itanium represents a major shift for Intel, away from its
32-bit (IA-32) design into the world of 64-bit (IA-64) computing.
The Itanium is aimed at the high-end server segment, an
area dominated by Sun's UltraSPARC and other RISC-based
processors. Narendra Bhandari, Intel APAC Regional
Manager- Strategic Relations, Internet Solutions Group tells
us the technological benefits of the Itanium and Xeon architecture
and how he feels that enterprises will benefit out of it.
by Soutiman Das Gupta and Minu Sirsalewala
EPIC
technology provides the ability to execute more operations
simultaneously
Why
have Intel's processors moved from 32-bit to 64-bit architecture?
32-bit processors are quite suitable for enterprise computing
but have certain limitations in areas of memory latency
and dynamic execution of instructions. The new IA-64 architecture
improves memory addressability and overall system bandwidth,
which was a problem with previous Xeon server implementations.
This made Xeon servers suitable for small office implementation
but not very preferred for enterprise use. To stay in competition
we needed to move to a full 64-bit design.
What benefits does the 64-bit Itanium processor provide
to enterprises?
Large enterprises and online stores that run huge databases
and data mining applications can take advantage of a large
cache memory in the processor. 64-bit addressability allows
you to process or transmit a large amount of data in parallel.
Itanium's EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing)
technology provides the ability to execute more operations
simultaneously. This can speed data queries and transactions
up to 16 TB of data. Itanium abandons conventional CISC
(Complex Instruction Set Computer) or RISC (Reduced Instruction
Set Computer) instruction sets for EPIC technology.
The main benefit of EPIC is to provide greater potentials
for instruction-level parallelism, prediction and speculation.
This means, the EPIC code can be highly optimized to allow
faster processing and achieve higher returns with multiprocessor
systems. The Itanium architecture can scale up to 512 processors.
What is Itanium's design philosophy?
The Itanium design philosophy is to put IA-64 and EPIC
at the forefront. But, it ensures that enterprises already
using legacy IA-32 architecture will not have hardware compatibility
problems with the new architecture. However the physical
design is slightly different than its IA-32 predecessors.
The Itanium has a speed of 733 MHz and 800 MHz, uses a 266
MHz-(133x2)-system bus which can afford overall system bandwidth
of 2.1 Gbps. It features three levels of internal CPU cache,
with a 32 Kb Level 1, 96 Kb Level 2, and either a 2 MB or
4 MB Level 3 cache. A floating-point engine allows complex
computations that may be required in data mining, scientific
and technical computing applications.
How does the Itanium help high-end server computing?
The Itanium and Intel's current i460 GX chipset supports
up to 64 GB of addressable system memory consisting of PC
100 SDRAM (Synchronous Dynamic RAM). The large memory size
allows Itanium to tackle large databases, transactions,
and CAD/CGI (Computer Aided Design/Common Gateway Interface)
applications.
The memory bandwidth scales to 4.2 Gbps.
If transactions on your servers take too long, the 64-bit
architecture can support faster queries and real time data
mining. It also facilitates smooth OLTP (OnLine Transaction
Processing) during peak traffic. This ensures optimal performance
of your servers. Tests have shown that Itanium-based systems
can provide up to twelve-fold performance improvement for
online security transactions over proprietary RISC designs.
What are the enhanced features in the Xeon processors
that support enterprise computing?
The most promising feature of the Xeon processor is
the NetBurst microarchitecture. The architecture is used
to deliver processing power for video, audio, latest Internet
technologies and 3-D graphics. The Intel Xeon processor
platform is based on the Intel 860 Chipset. The chipset
features dual RDRAM (Rambus Dynamic RAM) memory banks to
complement the Intel Xeon's 400 MHz system bus. RDRAM is
a type of DRAM developed by Rambus Inc. Since 1999, Intel
has been using RDRAM in its PIII Xeon processors and more
recently in its P4 processors. It is specially designed
to meet the scalability, availability and manageability
needs of the high-performance workstation market segment.
Depending on applications and configurations, Xeon-based
workstations have achieved increase in performance between
30 and 90 percent over systems featuring the PIII Xeon processor.
Which operating systems will be able to take advantage
of the Itanium's 64-bit EPIC architecture?
The Itanium architecture is compatible with most OSs.
It can run on Windows-based platforms, HP-UX 11i v 1.5 (HP's
proprietary Unix variant), AIX-5L (IBM's proprietary Unix
variant) and Linux. Other companies like Caldera, Red Hat,
SuSE Linux and TurboLinux plan to provide 64-bit versions
of the Linux OS. Microsoft is also working on a 64-bit version
of Windows that will be able to take advantage of this new
architecture.
What kind of support have Itanium received from vendors
worldwide?
HP is one of the first system vendors to support the
Itanium architecture. After all it has co-developed the
architecture with us. The company has a selection of Itanium
workstations and servers that range from single processor
desktops to loaded 16-way servers. Dell has announced numerous
Itanium configurations in its products. I expect many other
computer manufacturers to offer numerous configurations
by the end of this year.
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