Avi Blizovsky
Intel began providing samples of the Itanium 2, 64-bit processor, created by connecting 1.72 billion transistors. Talks about the processor, code-named Montecito, began as early as August 2002, but according to a company spokesperson, samples have only just begun to be delivered to a number of Intel customers. Montecito passes the milestone of one billion transistors because the Itanium 2 architecture is complicated in itself as a 64-bit processor intended for server applications, and Montecito integrates two processing cores on one chip, and is also equipped with a 26 MB on-chip cache memory.
Commercial deliveries of Intel's first dual-core processor for mobile uses such as laptops, codenamed Yuna, are expected by the end of the year, with large volume deliveries in 2006.
Intel announced in July 2004 that it was speeding up the schedule to get a billion transistors on an integrated circuit, and said that it intended to deliver a billion transistor processor in 2005, instead of the original target date of 2007.
The industry passed the million-transistor milestone with 1-megabit DRAMs in 1986 and with the Intel 80486, 32-bit processor, in 1989. The 80486 was manufactured using a 1.0 micron CMOS manufacturing process, had 1.2 million transistors, and operated at a clock frequency of up to 50 MHz.
The connoisseur of technological futurism
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