Intel unveils five new Itanium-2 processors

SANTA CLARA

JULY 19, 2006

Intel Corporation today unveiled five new products in the Dual-Core Intel
Itanium 2 Processor 9000 series. Previously codenamed "Montecito," the
new processors are designed for the most sophisticated high-end computing
platforms in the world. They double the performance and lower energy
requirements, improving performance per watt by 2.5 times compared to existing,
single-core versions. All server-maker members of the Itanium Solutions Alliance
(ISA) will launch new Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 Processor 9000 series-based
products.

The flagship 9050 model features two complete processing cores and nearly
triples the cache or memory reservoir versus Intel's previous generation. It
also can execute four instructions or threads per processor enhanced by Intel's
Hyper-Threading Technology (HT Technology).

The new Dual-Core Itanium 2 processors represent the world's most intricate
product design to date with more than 1.7 billion transistors. This allows Intel
designers to deliver new features to the Itanium processor family that create
robust virtualization capabilities, enhanced cache reliability and other
mainframe-like capabilities.

Unlike products from the remaining RISC vendors, the Dual-Core Intel Itanium
2 Processor 9000 series offers end-user freedom through a broad choice of
software with more than 8,000 applications in production. Itanium
processor-based servers and high-performance computing (HPC) systems are unique
in the industry. They provide mission critical support for Windows, Linux, UNIX
and other operating systems as well as new migration tools off of proprietary
servers and mainframes - delivering unbeatable flexibility and a confident
adoption path for IT managers to migrate to a standards-based architecture.

The Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processor 9000 series delivers performance at a
system scale unmatched by competing RISC architectures. It set world record
results in several key server benchmarks including a score of 4230
SPEC_int_rate_base_2000, nearly triple the previous record.

"Intel remains focused on removing the proprietary shackles that remain in
the high-end of the server market segment, and with Dual-Core Itanium 2
processors we are delivering unprecedented IT freedom with a product that excels
in performance, reliability and improved energy efficiency," said Pat
Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager, Intel's Digital Enterprise
Group. "The broad system and software support for Itanium 2 processors
enables CIOs to move away from aging and expensive legacy systems and instead
direct those funds toward standard-based computing and business innovation.

"In virtually all areas, momentum for Itanium-based systems is growing.
More applications were added during the first half this year than were available
in 2003 and more than 70 percent of the top Global 100 companies are choosing
Itanium technology. In addition, the Itanium Solutions Alliance has committed
$10 billion of hardware support through 2010 to the architecture."

Dual-core Itanium 2-based systems target the most compute intensive areas,
such as business analytics, large data warehouses and HPC areas. This is
increasingly important as companies continue to strive for real-time decision
making based on increasingly large amounts of data; and scientists, engineers
and researchers seek to solve medical, climatic and other challenges through the
use of computing power. The Itanium 2 processor's Explicitly Parallel
Instruction Computing (EPIC) architecture design provides high levels of
parallelism and computational capabilities, driving greater efficiency into
analytics applications and business intelligence software.

"Microsoft Windows Server 2003* and Microsoft SQL Server 2005* on the
new dual-core, multi-threaded Itanium 2 processor will provide exceptional
performance, scalability and reliability to enterprise customers with database
workloads and line of business applications," said Bob Muglia, senior vice
president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. "Microsoft is
resolute in its support of the Itanium architecture, today and in the
future."

Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT)

Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) is built into Itanium 2
processors to enhance support for OEM and industry virtual machine monitors (VMMs).
The built-in scalability, performance and industry leading reliability
capabilities of Itanium 2-based servers provide an outstanding platform for
consolidating proprietary solutions onto industry standards-based servers.
Virtualization can help lower the total cost of ownership by assisting with the
migration and consolidation of different software applications from proprietary
platforms to industry standard hardware and operating systems.

Supporting the Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processor 9000 series are two
rack-optimized Intel server systems: SR870BH2 and SR870BN4. These server systems
provide the optimum performance, reliability and expandability that scalable
business solutions and mission-critical applications demand and are available
today to OEMs and systems integrators for enterprise and high-performance
computing.

Pricing and availability

Intel dual- and single-core Itanium 2 processors are shipping today
with systems coming available in late August:

• Dual-Core Itanium 2 processor 9050 1.6GHz 24M 533/400 MHz $3692
• Dual-Core Itanium 2 processor 9040 1.6GHz 18M 533/400 MHz $1980
• Dual-Core Itanium 2 processor 9030 1.6GHz 8M 533/400 MHz $1552
• Dual-Core Itanium 2 processor 9020 1.42GHz 12M 533/400 MHz $910
• Dual-Core Itanium 2 processor 9015 1.4GHz 12M 400 MHz $749
• Itanium 2 processor (single core) 9010 1.6GHz 6M 533/400 MHz $696