Tukwila: The World’s First 2 billion Transistor Microprocessor
At ISSCC in San Francisco in February, Intel unveiled many of the much-anticipated details behind Tukwila, the next generation Itanium microprocessor, which is the world's first processor with more than 2 billion transistors. Tukwila is slated for release in late 2008.
Tukwila features an innovative Quad-Core architecture and is designed to run at a frequency of up to 2 GHz which will deliver more than twice the performance of the current Intel Dual-Core Itanium Processor 9100 series released in Q4 '07. The Itanium architecture's Explicitly Parallel Instruction Code (EPIC) technology is designed to be extremely efficient. It runs at relatively low frequencies and yet, accomplishes a tremendous amount during each clock cycle. This means it requires less power than most legacy RISC architecture, which requires much higher frequencies (and more electricity) to do equivalent work.
Along with the higher frequency, the increased performance of Tukwila is achieved via Intel's new QuickPath interconnect technology, which is designed to work with the high-speed integrated memory controller. With this capacity for dramatic speed increase, you'll see Intel QuickPath rolled out across several Intel server products, including the Xeon processor family. Stay tuned for more details later in 2008.
Tukwila also increases the on-die cache memory to 30 MB, up from the 9100 series maximum of 24 MB. With instruction sets and software applications tuned to take advantage of this 25% cache increase, this will further amplify the effective computing speed of Tukwila-based systems. Large, well-threaded applications like databases, ERP and business analytic apps that take advantage of large cache sizes should see a sizable speed-up in performance.
Tukwila's significant performance jump requires only a 25% percent increase in energy consumption. This is still a positive impact on energy efficiency because when you factor in the increased chip speed and the need to drive 2 billion transistors, the amount of energy required to deliver the same amount of computing power is actually 38% less than with the 9100 microprocessor series. Ultimately the total performance per watt achieved by Tukwila-based systems will depend on the server hardware designs and configurations, including equipped memory, disk drives, as well as built-in redundancies that are common to high-end servers, like extra power supplies, fans, etc. Nonetheless, it does appear that Tukwila-equipped servers will be able to do more work while consuming less power overall, especially when the systems are populated with multiple processors.
Tukwila also includes yet another important new RAS feature called Double Device Data Correction (DDDC). This is an important new reliability feature which allows a memory DIMM to keep running even when there are two sequential DRAM device hard-errors on a DIMM. Past solutions could only handle a single device memory hard error, but the Tukwila solution, with support for both single and double error recovery, improves system availability and reduces the need for DIMM replacements in the future. This is significant for Itanium-based solutions, since they frequently take advantage of large amounts of memory; the return on the RAS investment is multiplied several times over.
Of course, Tukwila will include all the features and technologies delivered on earlier product versions, including Core Level Lock-Step (CLL) and "Demand-Based Switching" (DBS) technologies, introduced in the Itanium 9100 series (code name Montvale). CLL, a feature you might find in a mainframe, allows automatic mirroring of each core by another core, to ensure data integrity and system availability in the presence of point failures. DBS switches microprocessor power on or off as workloads change, effectively making these chips even more energy efficient, especially when the processor is idling, waiting to perform work.
And yes, it also includes the unique Intel Virtualization Technology (IVT), which makes it even easier for IT shops to implement consolidation projects. IVT also helps IT achieve efficient load balancing, disaster recovery and rapid deployment of applications and server images on a wide range of virtual machines.
Tukwila, Intel's seventh and latest generation of Itanium product, is expected to ship in late 2008. Check with your Itanium Solutions Alliance founding sponsor for details on when their first systems will ship.
All views expressed within this blog are those of the blog author and do not reflect the opinions of the Itanium Solutions Alliance, Itanium Solutions Alliance member companies or Intel Corporation.
