Itanium to move to dual-core design
eWeek | at | by Mike
A senior executive with Intel Corp. Tuesday revealed plans for a dual-core Itanium processor, belittled Sun Microsystems Inc.'s rival product as "old fashioned" and hinted that Dell Computer Corp. may be out of its league in the 64-bit arena during a briefing to tout the chip maker's Itanium product line. Mike Fister, general manager of Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group, expressed his views on the high-end 64-bit computing market during a meeting with reporters at the Intel Developer Forum here. The executive added that Intel's decision to roll out hyperthreading technologies across all its desktop and server processors will help set the stage for a transition to a dual-core design. Specifically, hyperthreading enables a single processor to handle dual data streams, like two virtual processors.