Intel Finally Starts Shipping 'Tukwila' Itanium Chips

Intel, the world's leading manufacturer of computer processors, has begun shipping its much-anticipated, next-generation Itanium server processors, codenamed Tukwilla. This is a major breakthrough for the Santa Clara, California-based chip maker, which has repeatedly delayed the release of these 64-bit chip, due to various issues. Back in May, last year, the chip giant announced that they had to delay the shipment of said chips, as an opportunity to improve application scalability arose.

"Tukwila," the code name for the newest Itanium processor, has begun revenue shipments. The most advanced Itanium processor yet, "Tukwila" more than doubles the performance of its predecessor and adds a range of new scalability, reliability, and virtualization features. Eighty percent of the Global 100 companies already use Itanium-based servers. The launch of this Itanium mission-critical processor is part of a major push Intel is making into the server processor arena, with several announcements slated for the first half of the year, reads one of Intel's blog pages.

The official debut of Tukwilla is expected to be announced in the near future, with the company also planning a couple of more surprises for its business customers. Tukwilla is a 64-bit processor, designed to support fault-tolerant servers that require high uptime. Said to be manufactured using a 65nm process, these chips will compete with similar offerings from the likes of Sun or IBM, with their Sparc or Power processors, respectively.

Despite various launch delays, Intel appears to have established a six-year roadmap for its Itanium chips, which includes the Poulson and Kittson, expected to follow Tukwilla. Poulson will migrate to the 32nm process, but there are no details for when this new chip is due out.

Intel's next-generation Itanium begins shipping just ahead of the International Solid State Circuits Conference, where the aforementioned Sun and IBM are expected to deliver presentations on processors for high-end servers.