Is this a “Bania” chip , earlier it was “Tulsa” chip. What names they have chosen.
Intel’s Whitefield goes Banias in 2006
By Ashlee Vance in Las Vegas
Published Wednesday 5th May 2004 20:30 GMT
Exclusive The Register has learned more details about Intel’s future Xeon processor code-named “Whitefield”, the company’s first all-Indian design, that we first revealed last week.
Whitefield is a low-power multicore Xeon processer that places four mobile Banias cores around a shared Level 2 cache. The chip will arrive sooner than we expected last week; our sources say 2006. This chimes with predictions made by Intel India’s President Ketan Sampat, who said customers could expect a new Xeon out of India by 2005 or 2006 on a 65 nanometer process.
It should be noted, that Whitefield’s design differs from what you would expect with Intel’s Tukwila version of Itanium. Tukwila will place numerous cores on a single die instead of connecting cores via shared memory.
The design, in theory, is similar to what IBM did with Power4. In that case, IBM combined two dual-core processors with the help of its multichip module. Intel will be using single core chips but similar module packaging. Basically, this means that Intel will be shipping the dual-core Tulsa chip and Whitefield at about the same time. This gives customers a choice between a faster but more power hungry chip and a slower chip aimed at lower-end tasks such as Web serving.
Intel’s secrecy behind Whitefield is not surprising given that the company may appear to be lagging rivals with the design. Sun’s Niagara chip, also due in 2006, combines up to 8 low-power cores on a single chip. Both Whitefield and Niagara appear aimed at reducing the time it takes a processor to communicate with memory. This is an ideal strategy for software such as Web and application servers that make lots of requests but don’t require terribly high single thread performance.
It could be argued that Transmeta and RLX helped pave the way for such products with their success in the low-power blade server market. ®
New Xeon unearthed as Intel’s first all-India chip
By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Published Saturday 1st May 2004 03:41 GMT
Exclusive A future Xeon processor from Intel has popped up on the company’s roadmap with a first-of-its-kind name and birthplace. The chip dubbed “Whitefield” has its roots in India and not the Pacific Northwest, The Register has learned.
A confidential roadmap obtained by El Reg has revealed “Whitefield” to be a Xeon processor aimed at multiprocessor servers that will arrive in 2008. The chip follows “Potomac” due out next year, and its dual-core older brother “Tulsa.” But unlike its predecessors, “Whitefield” will be 100 percent designed in India with its name coming from an industrial township on the edge of Bangalore.
Multiple sources, outside of Intel but familiar with the company’s plans, have also confirmed knowledge of the Whitefield chip.
At first, we were thrown off by the Whitefield name, searching maps of Oregon and Washington to locate the city. After all, that’s where almost all of Intel’s code-names originate - Yamhill and Tukwila being two examples. But a search pointed us toward Bangalore where Intel recently laid down $41m to build a new processor design center.
Gravy!
When the India design center was first announced, Intel India’s President Ketan Sampat bragged that his workers would be taking on a future Xeon design.
“We are in a three year development phase. So a ‘Made in India’ chip is likely to be released in the year 2005-’06,” he said at the time.
It appears, however, that Sampat was a bit optimistic. Our best information indicates that both Potomac and Tulsa were designed here.
At present, there is very little information available about Whitefield. It will arrive shortly after the Tukwila version of Itanium appears in 2007, but no speeds or design specs are provided on the confidential roadmap. Calls, however, have been placed, and we hope to bring you more in the very near future.
As with any processor four years out, there is a risk that Whitefield might not arrive exactly as planned. But our roadmap shows that as of this month, Intel’s intentions for the processor were all systems go.
In a larger context, the success of Intel’s India crew highlights some fears workers here have had about sending jobs overseas. Processor design work does not fit in the call center/low-level programming category that tends to dominate US companies offshoring plans. These are highly skilled workers going head-to-head against their US counterparts.
So, if retraining is your best bet for keeping the paycheck coming, you’d better “skill up” fast. Sigh.
