14 DAY TRIAL // A new quad core processor is expected from Intel sometime during the next week and just a few days before the official launch of the AMD Barcelona processors. The new Intel processor, a Xeon MP named Tigerton, will mark the complete transition to the Core architectures for processors designed for use in servers, desktop and mobile computer systems alike.
Tigerton will be based on the quad core architecture and it is intended for use in servers with multiprocessor support as it can communicate and operate together with three another CPUs from the same class. This new processor is part of the server hardware platform named Caneland and the manufacturing company plans a show off next week in order to present its processors and platform to the most important players on the server market: HP, Dell, IBM and Sun Microsystems. It is expected that Tigerton based servers will launch officially someday during the third quarter but as the servers themselves will be very powerful and therefore very expensive, only a limited number will be made. Even with a higher than normal price tag, the Tigerton servers might enjoy some degree of popularity as the four way server market is currently growing and demand for more computing power is at its peak.
The Tigerton is aiming at a currently sore spot on Intel's market map as the multi way server market has been for years the fiefdom of AMD Operon processors that are used in Dell-made servers. With Tigerton, Intel expects to grab some of the market as it switches its production to CPUs based on the Core architecture that should offer some performance bonus over the previous architecture, the Netburst. The Caneland architecture's main performance gain will come from the use of dedicated communication lines between the processors' cores, leaving behind the current approach that uses the frontside bus.
The Tigertons will closely compete for market dominance with AMD's Barcelonas processors that are due for launch in a few more days, after several months of delay. And it is hoped that it will gain a significant server market share in preparation for the 2008 launch of the Nehalem class of processors that promises a complete overhauled internal architecture and many new technologies.