Intel To Detail Itanium ‘Poulson’ Processor @ ISSCC 2011

X-bit Labs reported that Intel would be detailing the next-generation Itanium processor, code-named Poulson at the upcoming International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February, 2011. The powerful processor would arrive in the high-performance computing market sometime in 2012. Even though Intel would further detail the product in the conference, the site did detail some interesting information about Poulson’s architecture.

The Itanium processor will double the amount of IA64 cores as well as the amount of cache memory available to the cores while maintaining compatibility with the Itanium 9300-series platform.

The 32nm eight core Itanium processor will contain 3.1 billion transistors while measuring 18.2 x 29.9mm, while a die size of 545.8mm2. While information about the exact size and die has been known, we greatly think that either the company has already finished working on the sample of the chip or at least digital “floor plan” has been laid out.

The Itanium “Poulson” processor will comprise of eight multi-threaded cores, a ring-based system interface and combined 50 MB cache on the die. High speed links allow bandwidth transfer of up to 128GB/s and memory bandwidth of up to 45 GB/s.