McKinley info from IDC available on Microprocessor Reports.
*** Intel's McKinley Comes Into View
By Kevin Krewell {10/1/01-01}
Intel released significant details of the next
IA-64 processor, code-named "McKinley," at the
Intel Developer Forum Fall 2001 conference, while
the Pentium 4 and Hyper-Threading Technology
garnered most of the headlines. McKinley ushers
in a number of significant improvements to the
EPIC (explicitly parallel instruction-set
computing) architecture and Intel projects it
will deliver 1.5-2.0 times better performance
than the existing IA-64 processor, Itanium
(Merced).
Some performance improvements can be attributed
to the 1GHz target frequency (up 25% from the
800MHz Itanium), but the rest come from
significant bandwidth and memory latency
improvements. The McKinley architecture builds on
the Merced design but incorporates a laundry list
of improvements that include higher frequency,
shorter pipeline, reduced cache latencies, on-
chip L3 cache, larger L2 cache, additional
functional units with additional issue ports, a
threefold improvement on front-side bus
bandwidth, and a greater addressing capability.
McKinley also brings a new socket design to IA-
64, which will make the Merced platform obsolete
by 2003.
Microprocessor Report readers can access the full
story here: mdronline.com |
