Intel Corporation has unveiled five new products in the dual-core Intel Itanium 2 Processor 9000 series. Previously code-named "Montecito," the new processors are designed for some of the most sophisticated high-end computing platforms in the world. They double the performance and lower energy requirements, improving performance per watt by 2.5 times compared to existing, single-core versions. All server-maker members of the Itanium Solutions Alliance (ISA) will launch new dual-core Intel Itanium 2 Processor 9000 series-based products.

The flagship 9050 model features two complete processing cores and nearly triples the cache or memory reservoir versus Intel's previous generation. It also can execute four instructions or threads per processor enhanced by Intel's Hyper-Threading Technology (HT Technology).

According to Intel, the new dual-core Itanium 2 processors represent the world's most intricate product design to date with more than 1.7 billion transistors. This allows Intel designers to deliver new features to the Itanium processor family such as robust virtualization capabilities, enhanced cache reliability and other mainframe-like capabilities.

The dual-core Intel Itanium 2 Processor 9000 series is currently supported by more than 8,000 applications. Itanium processor-based servers and high performance computing systems provide mission critical support for Windows, Linux, UNIX and other operating systems as well a migration path off of proprietary servers and mainframes.

Intel claims its dual-core Itanium 2 delivers superior performance compared to RISC architectures. It set world record results in several key server benchmarks, including a score of 4230 SPEC_int_rate_base_20001, nearly triple the previous record.

"Intel remains focused on removing the proprietary shackles that remain in the high-end of the server market segment, and with dual-core Itanium 2 processors we are delivering unprecedented IT freedom with a product that excels in performance, reliability and improved energy efficiency," said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager, Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. "The broad system and software support for Itanium 2 processors enables CIOs to move away from aging and expensive legacy systems and instead direct those funds toward standard-based computing and business innovation.

"In virtually all areas, momentum for Itanium-based systems is growing. More applications were added during the first half this year than were available in 2003 and more than 70 percent of the top global 100 companies are choosing Itanium technology. In addition, the Itanium Solutions Alliance has committed $10 billion of hardware support through 2010 to the architecture."

Dual-core Itanium 2-based systems target the most compute-intensive areas, such as business analytics, large data warehouses and HPC areas. This is increasingly important as companies continue to strive for real-time decision making based on increasingly large amounts of data; and scientists, engineers and researchers seek to solve medical, climatic and other challenges through the use of computing power. The Itanium 2 processor's Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC) architecture design provides high levels of parallelism and computational capabilities, driving greater efficiency into analytics applications and business intelligence software.

"Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on the new dual-core, multi-threaded Itanium 2 processor will provide exceptional performance, scalability and reliability to enterprise customers with database workloads and line of business applications," said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. "Microsoft is resolute in its support of the Itanium architecture, today and in the future."

Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) is built into Itanium 2 processors to enhance support for OEM and industry virtual machine monitors (VMMs). The built-in scalability, performance and industry leading reliability capabilities of Itanium 2-based servers provide a  platform for consolidating proprietary solutions onto industry standards-based servers. Virtualization can help lower the total cost of ownership by assisting with the migration and consolidation of different software applications from proprietary platforms to industry standard hardware and operating systems.

Supporting the dual-core Intel Itanium 2 processor 9000 series are two rack-optimized Intel server systems: SR870BH2 and SR870BN4. These server systems are designed to provide the performance, reliability and expandability that scalable business solutions and mission-critical applications require and are currently available to OEMs and systems integrators for enterprise and high performance computing.

Intel dual- and single-core Itanium 2 processors are currently shipping with systems becoming available in late August.