Montecito (processor)


Montecito is the code-name of a major release of Intel's Itanium 2 Processor Family, which implements the Intel Itanium architecture on a dual-core processor. It was officially launched by Intel on July 18, 2006 as the "Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processor". According to Intel, Montecito doubles performance versus the previous, single-core Itanium 2 processor, and reduces power consumption by about 20%. It also adds multi-threading capabilities, a greatly expanded cache subsystem, and silicon support for virtualization.

Architectural Features and Attributes

On October 25, 2005 Intel announced that the first dual-core Itanium processor would be delayed until "the middle of next year." Montecito was launched on July 18, 2006. Due to unspecified issues, Intel's Foxton power management technology was disabled in the first release of Montecito, and the front-side bus frequency was reduced to 267 MHz instead of the 333 MHz speed originally scheduled for the design .
At the time of launch, the following models and pricing were available:
There are no plans for additional Montecito processors; the successor, Montvale was released in late 2007.

Successors

See Itanium future processors