Intel server chips hit 1 GHz
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
August 21, 2000, 9:00 p.m. PT
Intel will ratchet up the speed of its high-end Xeon chips to 1 GHz, the company plans
to announce at its Intel Developer Forum conference tomorrow.
Because of bottlenecks talking to memory and other components in a computer, a 1-GHz CPU
has more psychological value than practical utility. Nevertheless, the milestone highlights
Intel's ability to continue advancing its manufacturing methods even for Xeon chips, which are
sold to more demanding and conservative customers.
Xeons are used primarily in servers, the computers that are the
brains of computer networks, said Tom Garrison, director of product
marketing for Intel's 32-bit chips. The chip also is sold for users of
workstations, the high-performance desktop computers used by
designers, engineers and scientists.
The 1-GHz speed applies only to the models of Xeon that have
256K of secondary cache, the high-speed memory that eases
delays that result from talking to ordinary, slower-speed memory. In
addition, the 1-GHz chips can be used in two-processor systems.
"This is the first gigahertz dual-processor (CPU) in the industry,"
Garrison said.
The new Xeons cost $719 in quantities of 1,000, spokesman Otto
Pipjker said.
More expensive Xeons come with as much as 2MB of cache and
can be used in four-processor configurations. The right chipset, Intel's Profusion design, allows
two four-processor units to be grouped into an eight-CPU system.
Xeons differ from ordinary Pentium chips because
Intel manufactures them for a longer time, a move
that accommodates customers' more careful and
protracted software and hardware testing period.
Those long qualification times led Intel to cancel
an 800-MHz version of the large-cache Xeons,
which top out at a speed of 700 MHz.
Intel servers gradually are growing up compared with competing designs from Sun
Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq Computer and others. A next-generation Xeon
code-named "Foster" is due next year that removes many of the bottlenecks that hamper
current chips.
Another improvement over regular Pentium chips is a feature that makes it easier to monitor the
temperature of the CPU and switch on more fans when necessary.
Akamai, a company that speeds the transfer of information around the Internet, plans to buy
300 Xeon-based servers each month, Garrison said. |
