Chipguy:
With your apparent reading problems, you better hope you are not fired.
You claimed Montecito was not originally dual core. The Geek article (dated in 2003) says you are wrong (as usual). It first slipped from mid 2004 to mid 2005. Madison was given more cache and a small raise to 1.6GHz. With the typical feature creep that seems to dog Intel, features were added to Montecito, things changed, etc. A good deal of those add ons turned out to be problematic. So it slipped to late 2005. Then more problems happened and it slipped into 2006 with features either turned off or removed. The clock was not as high as planned either. First it was above 2GHz. Then at 2GHz. Then to 1.8GHz, 1.7GHz and finally just 1.6GHz.
Just because Intel wasn't ready for tapeout in early 2003 for shipping in mid 2004 as per plan, you want to give Intel a pass. So design and tapeout got delayed at least one year. Then testing showed problems and missing the frequency and power targets which slipped it altogether about 2 years. Remember, it was to be released mid 2004 after a 12-18 month testing period.
Face it, every Itanium CPU has been later than planned and due to that and some clock speed reductions, slower than competing CPUs. Montecito is just another disappointment.
Pete
AI
