Harry & Intel Investors - Merced Chip Set Designs Proliferate
IBM and HP, as well as Intel, will be making them.
Paul
{==================================}
Core-logic efforts under way for Merced
By Alexander Wolfe, EE Times
Jul 16, 1999 (2:00 PM)
URL: eetimes.com
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Separate efforts are under way to forge core-logic chip sets that will enable Intel Corp.'s upcoming 64-bit Merced microprocessor and its successor, code-named McKinley, to power large-scale multiprocessing systems. While Intel is at work on a commodity core-logic offering, IBM Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. are pursuing separate plans to design chip sets that will differentiate their systems and support larger multiprocessing configurations. The chip-set work came to light this week as Intel disclosed it had completed a major milestone on the long road to Merced by taping out the processor, according to Paul Otellini, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's business-architecture group.
Taken together, the news should come as a relief to OEMs planning IA-based servers. They have been on tenterhooks due to concerns about potential slippages in Intel's schedule for Merced. That fire was fueled in May 1998, when Intel announced it would push back Merced production from 1999 to mid-2000. Merced is the first implementation of the new IA-64 architecture, jointly developed by Intel and HP.
News that Merced has taped out "means the processor design is complete," an Intel spokeswoman said.
However, Merced still has a way to go before it's in designers' hands. Now that it has taped out, the spokeswoman said, "We're moving forward to making samples." That silicon is expected sometime in the third quarter.
Intel said it remains on schedule to ship production volumes of Merced in mid-2000. McKinley is due to sample in late 2000 and ship in late 2001. Although industry pundits have anxiously awaited Merced, some engineers now appear more interested in its higher-performance successor.
"There are some good performance enhancements in McKinley, which will lend themselves to very robust systems," said Tom Bradicich, director of architecture and design for IBM's Netfinity server group (Research Triangle Park, N.C.).
According to Intel, McKinley will deliver double the performance of Merced and will run at clock speeds beyond 1 GHz.
Perhaps the biggest differentiator among Merced-based systems offerings will be the core logic that's used inside the box.
To that end, IBM is building a core-logic chip set that will enable it to construct up to 32-way multiprocessing systems. The set, code-named Summit, is being designed at IBM's Research Triangle Park PC operations. It will be used in upcoming incarnations of the Netfinity server family.
The impetus for the effort, said IBM's Bradicich, was the need to ensure a more-robust platform that wouldn't be subject to the crashes that are so common in desktop computing environments. "It is not possible to find the performance, reliability and scalability [we need] in a commodity chip set," said Bradicich.
In philosophical terms, Bradicich sees his charter for Netfinity as "building IBM enterprise-class capability into an X86 platform." Separately, IBM this week made a bid to acquire Sequent Computer, a deal that gives IBM access to Sequent's non-uniform memory-access technology for systems with potentially even greater processing power than a 32-way symmetric multiprocessing computer.
Proprietary HP core
Hewlett-Packard is also looking to break from the pack with a proprietary core-logic chip set for Merced that supports up to 32-way multiprocessing. HP will use it as a key enabling technology for a line of high-end, high-performance servers built around the IA-64 architecture. The chip set is code-named CEC, for core electronics complement.
HP is focusing on a family of servers, code-named Tahoe, that will rely on the CEC set for a leg up in performance.
As for Intel, it appears to be aiming for the volume market. The company's core-logic centerpiece will be the 82460GX, which will support one- to four-way processing.
Other sets may also be in the works, sources said. Intel has been working on its commodity core-logic offerings for at least three years, with participation from Hitachi, NEC and Siemens. Intel's current center of operations for the effort is its Enterprise Technology Center, opened earlier this year in DuPont, Wash.
News of Merced's tapeout will likely heat up the battle for preeminence on the IA-64 operating system front. Several 64-bit Unix efforts from a variety of companies and a 64-bit version of Windows NT from Microsoft are in the works.
Specifically, IA-64 Unix ports include HP-UX from Hewlett-Packard, Monterey from IBM and Santa Cruz Operation, Irix from Silicon Graphics, Modesto from Novell, Solaris from Sun and Tru64Unix from Compaq. A Linux port is also being done under the auspices of VA Research.
Uncertainty lingers about Microsoft's 64-bit version of NT. The company is poised to ship Windows 2000 but that OS, formerly known as NT 5.0, will not be a full 64-bit release.
|
