Looks Like "Madison" Itanium 2 in Late June, Early July

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

We've all been talking about the future "Madison" Itanium 2 processor from Intel for so long now that it sometimes feels like the processor is already here. Of course, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Group Bull, NEC, and others have been showing off benchmarks on the forthcoming processor in the past few months, but it isn't actually an available product yet.

The scuttlebutt is that Intel and its Itanium partners, which will very likely include IBM Corp and Dell Inc as well as the vendors mentioned above, are getting ready for the launch of the Madison processor sometime at the end of June or in early July. Exactly when is unclear, and Intel is trying to get all the press and analysts under embargo before the launch date slips out.

Madison is expected to run at 1.5 GHz and include 6 MB of on-chip L3 cache memory, offering about 50% more oomph than the current "McKinley" version of the Itanium 2 processor, which runs at 900 MHz and 1 GHz with either 1.5 MB or 3 MB of on-chip L3 cache. Given Intel's past history with the Xeon and Itanium lines, it is likely that Intel will also launch a 1.3 GHz version of Madison with 3 MB of L3 cache or 6 MB of L3 cache and then charge a big premium for the 1.5 GHz/6 MB L3 cache version of the processor.

Pricing is anybody's guess, but if Intel wants to get Madison into the market, it has to cut prices from the levels it has held for the first generation "Merced" and second-generation McKinley Itaniums. Intel has to deliver price cuts as well as increased performance to get Itanium better building momentum in the market and to pull the rug out from under rival Advanced Micro Devices before it gets traction with its "Hammer" Opteron alternatives to the Itanium processors.

Moreover, it there is not, as far as most workstation and entry server users are concerned, a considerable performance difference between a 64-bit Madison running at 1.5 GHz and a 32-bit "Prestonia" Pentium 4 Xeon DP running at 3.06 GHz, the pricing can't be out of whack. Right now, a 1 GHz McKinley with 3 MB of L3 cache costs $4,226, one dollar less than the 800 MHz Merced with 4 MB of external L2 cache, while that very fast Prestonia chip sells for $690. (These prices are all 1,000-unit quantities.) Obviously, if Intel wants to sell millions of Itaniums, it has to do something about pricing. This can't work. No one can afford Itanium at these prices.

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