Quo Vadis Intel? The Latest Roadmap

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Intel Roadmap - Workstation / Dual Processor Server / Multi Processor Server

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Itanium Processor
Q2/01Itanium 2/4 MB L3-cache 800 MHz
Q4/01'McKinley' pilot run, supported by 870 chipset
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Pentium 4 Xeon Processor
May 2001Foster 1.7 GHz with 256 kB L2-cache, no L3-cache, supported by 860 chipset
Q3/01Foster 2 GHz with 256 kB L2-cache, no L3-cache, supported by 860 chipset
Q3/01Dual-Processor Foster 2 GHz with 256 kB L2-cache, no L3-cache, supported ServerWorks GC-HE chipset
Q4/01Multi-Processor Foster 1.6 GHz with 512 kB or 1 MB L3-cache, supported ServerWorks GC-HE chipset
Q1/02Prestonia, supported by 860 for Prestonia chipset
Q1/02Dual-Processor Prestonia, supported by Plumas chipset, with DDR and Infiniband support
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Pentium III Processor
Q2/01 ??Tualatin Processor with 512 kB L2-cache

Explanations

All those code names are a bit confusing and I didn't feel like writing about each product. However, I want to give you a few comments that are hopefully helpful to understand the whole enchilada.

  • 'Northwood' will be the next-generation Pentium 4 processor, which will not be backwards compatible with previous Pentium 4 platforms. Northwood is expected in Q3, 2001.
  • 'Tualatin' is the next generation Pentium III processor. It will also require a new platform, either the B-step i815 chipset or i830 Almador. The latter seems to have been dropped for desktop systems however and might only appear as i830M in notebooks.

  • The normal Tualatin for desktop systems is supposed to come with 256 kB second level cache, while the notebook version will have 512 kB. However, there is supposed to be a Socket370-version of 'Tualatin-512' available as well, targeted to dual processor systems.
    The roadmap says that Tualatin will be priced higher than Pentium III, but also higher than some Pentium 4 processors. Prices for Tualatin are not available yet, but are expected for March.
  • 'Foster' is the workstation/server version of the Pentium 4 that we know now. It will be supported by the i860 chipset, which is a workstation version of Intel's 850 chipset. Later there will be Foster processors with integrated third level cache for multi-processor systems. I expect that Foster will receive the official name 'Pentium 4 Xeon'.
  • 'Prestonia' is the 'Xeon'-version of 'Northwood' and thus the next-generation workstation/server processor after 'Foster'. It will also be manufactured in 0.13 micron process and it might also require a different socket than 'Foster'.
  • The 'Plumas' chipset will probably be the workstation/server version of 'Brookdale', including DDR-SDRAM support, but also dual processor and maybe even MP-support.

So that's it, Intel's latest roadmap. I hope you enjoyed it.

Thomas Pabst