Gartner takes positive, but realistic stance on Itanium 2
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Intel Improves Itanium, But Don't Compare It to a Pentium
Intel announced performance estimates for its second generation of Itanium processors. Itanium's effectiveness in running critical systems ¯ not clock speed ¯ offers the true measure of its performance.
Event
On 29 May 2003, Intel announced performance estimates for its forthcoming Itanium 2 processor. With higher data speeds and micro-architectural enhancements, Intel expects that servers and workstations using the Itanium 2 processor will deliver up to 1.5 to two times the performance of Itanium-based systems.
First Take
Some observers wrongly compare the raw performance of Itanium to that of Intel's desktop processors, optimized for clock speed and low cost. However, clock speed doesn't offer the proper comparison. Itanium was designed to deal with three critical issues:
- Long-term memory performance
- Integrity
- Server performance
These factors must all be balanced carefully for enterprise applications, so the nature of a server's performance differs from that of a desktop "speed demon."
Processors run at gigahertz rates while memory subsystems still run at initial access speeds of around 20MHz. This gap in performance will continue to widen because processor makers get paid based on clock speed, memory makers on megabytes. One solution is a larger cache. Itanium 2 has a 3MB cache on the die itself. Intel's other processors have started looking like fast memories with a processor embedded on the die. Another solution is a new architecture. Itanium's highly parallel architecture will continue to gain in performance as its compiler advances.
Itanium is also designed for a different environment. It incorporates features aimed at guaranteeing the integrity of data, features missing from Intel's other processors because their cost is not justified in the mass market. Itanium 2 also offers a dramatically faster system bus than the Pentium 4 — 6.4GB/sec compared to 4.2GB/sec — and the ability to connect multiple processors in parallel without crippling the system bus.
In the long run, some of the benefits from researching the Itanium architecture will make their way into the Pentium line. At the same time, the astonishing manufacturing advances behind the Pentium 4 — not foreseen when Itanium was planned — will make their way into Itanium and will manifest themselves as faster clock speeds and greater resources. Gartner expects that Itanium will continue to close the gap on Pentium performance and surpass it by about 2007 as its architectural advantages pay off against the memory.
Enterprises will need to evaluate Itanium carefully against their needs. For some applications, it may offer the most cost-effective alternative to Xeon, which Itanium 2 surpasses in some enterprise-class applications. And as Itanium advances, it will sweep more applications into its fold. Enterprises should use Itanium for applications where it is effective and avoid applications where it is not.
Analytical Source: Martin Reynolds, Gartner Research
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