Launch Of Intel Dual-Core Itanium Reportedly Set For Tuesday

Intel Corp. reportedly plans to introduce the first dual-core model of its high-end Itanium 2 processor on Tuesday.

The Santa Clara, Calif., chipmaker in June started shipping Montecito to key customers. The Wall Street Journal on Monday said the company plans to formally introduce the dual-core chip on Tuesday.

Montecito, formally known as the Itanium 2 9000 family, is expected to give Intel a boost in the market for processors capable of driving high-powered computing jobs such as transaction-driven financial applications. Rivals in the market include IBM and Sun Microsystems Inc.

Last month, Intel unveiled the Woodcrest CPU, a single-core chip formally known as the Xeon 5100 family that's aimed at mainstream business servers. Intel's main rival in the space is Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Opteron processor. In the third quarter, the company plans to launch Tulsa, a dual-core Xeon server chip.

Montecito, however, is expected to fill a hole in Intel's product line for ultra-high performance servers. In releasing the new model of its Itanium 2 architecture, Intel is looking to compete with dual-core chips already offered by rivals IBM and Sun Microsystems.