Intel plans demo of Opteron rival: 'CT' Last modified: January 29, 2004, 1:32 PM PST By Stephen Shankland Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Intel plans to demonstrate a 64-bit revamp of its Xeon and Pentium processors in mid-February--an endorsement of a major rival's strategy and a troubling development for Intel's Itanium chip.
The demo, which follows the AMD64 approach of Intel foe Advanced Micro Devices, is expected at the Intel developer conference, Feb. 17 through 19 in San Francisco, said sources familiar with the plan. Intel had code-named the technology Yamhill but now calls it CT, sources said.
Adding 64-bit features would let "x86" chips such as Intel's Xeon and Pentium overcome today's 4GB memory limit but would undermine the hope that Intel's current 64-bit chip, Itanium, will ever ship in large quantities. A CT demonstration would send the message that prospective Itanium customers should put Itanium purchases on hold, said Peter Glaskowsky, Microprocessor Report editor in chief.
"If they put all the effort into Xeon they put into Itanium, it could be a very impressive thing. They could get very close to the performance levels of Itanium," Glaskowsky said. But there would be a cost: "In the long run, if they were really serious about x86-64...it would kill Itanium."
That would hurt Intel, which has staked much of its reputation on Itanium, but it would affect partners such as Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Graphics more; both rely on Itanium for their future server designs.
Intel spokesman Bill Kircos declined to comment on the CT name or plan other than to say, "We will include extensions in our chips if our customers are requesting it and if the infrastructure is available including a production operating system...tools, software and applications."
[ Pushing out timing expectations... *production* OS (meaning MS) is not here until H2. ]
Kircos also maintained that Itanium "has turned a corner" and is achieving mainstream acceptance in the high-end server market. "The CIOs who buy Itanium are more conservative than Pat Buchanan," unwilling to make dramatic computing changes overnight. "This is a marathon, not a sprint."
The CT name follows a pattern Intel uses to name features the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker is building into its chips: the already released HT hyperthreading technology that lets a single chip act in some ways like two; the VT "Vanderpool" technology for running multiple operating systems on one chip; and the LT "LaGrande" security technology.
AMD's Opteron is catching on. In the third quarter--only the second since Opteron's April debut--about 10,746 Opteron servers were sold, more than twice the 4,957 Itanium systems, according to market researcher IDC. However, Opteron and Itanium shipments both are far short of the 1.18 million servers that shipped with Intel's Xeon or Pentium or AMD's Athlon.
Major names have joined several second-tier companies to sell Opteron servers, including IBM, Sun Microsystems and, according to sources, soon Hewlett-Packard, too.
Itanium has been able to run x86 software only very slowly, though Intel says performance is improving with a software emulation technology called IA-32 Execution Layer. In contrast, AMD's x86-64 approach, now called AMD64, runs the vast quantity of existing software for Pentium and Xeon.
An Intel CT demonstration doesn't mean the technology is ready for mainstream use, however.
Analysts believe that as with hyperthreading, Vanderpool and LaGrande, Intel put the technology into chips but is waiting to enable it until necessary software support catches up. Insight64 analyst Nathan Brookwood and Glaskowsky believe CT was built into an upcoming Pentium 4 version called Prescott, due Feb. 2.
[ This makes no sense. You don't demo something on Feb 19th that is in a chip launched on Feb 2. What follows makes more sense: ]
That means CT would also be in Prescott's Xeon derivatives--"Nocona" for dual-processor systems and "Potomac" for those with four or more processors.
However, Brookwood believes Intel will wait for the appearance of Prescott's successor, called Tejas, which is due in early 2005. The reason for the wait, Brookwood believes, is that the Prescott designs were complete before Intel had access to AMD's approach, meaning that software tuned for one wouldn't work on the other.
"They need that compatibility now," Brookwood said. "I believe that Tejas is coming so hard on Prescott's heels (because) Tejas has the compatibility that is not in Prescott and Prescott derivates."
Because of the Itanium commitment, Intel currently is reluctant to talk about how great CT could make Xeon, Glaskowsky said. "They cannot afford to say that, because they're not sure yet that they want to do this," he said.
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