Intel has begun shipping its latest 64-bit Xeon DP chip, 'Irwindale', the chip maker said today. It also pledged to ship an updated 64-bit Xeon MP part, 'Potomac', "within 90 days".
The new Xeon DPs contain 2MB of on-die L2 cache, up from the 1MB built into the previous version, and are clocked at 3.0, 3.2, 3.4 and 3.6GHz. The chips are priced at $316, $455, $690 and $851, respectively. Both generations support Intel's AMD64-like EM64T 64-addressing system, as do the upcoming Pentium 4 6xx desktops chips, due to be announced this week too.
The upcoming Xeon MPs will sport 8MB of on-die L3 cache. An modified version, codenamed 'Cranford', with no L3 cache but 1MB of L2, for vendors who want to offer four-way systems but at a more comparable price point to two-way Xeon DP-based machines.
Potomac will utilise Intel's 8500 chipset, aka 'Twin Castle', which incorporates support for 400MHz ECC DDR 2 SDRAM, PCI Express and twin asymmetric frontside buses the better to support future dual-core processors.
