[Info-vax] RealWorldTech on Poulson

[Neil Rieck]

[...snip...]

>
> About geometry shrinks. Not that it realy matters, but... :-)
>
> I just checked these two pages :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Alphahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium
>
> It's interesting to compare the last Alpha (EV7z) and the
> current Itanium (Tukwila).
>
> The EV7z was released in 2004, used 180 nm and runs at 1.3 GHz.
> Tukwila was released 2010, uses 65 nm and runs at 1.33-1.73 GHz.
> Pulson (next year?) will use 32 nm.
>
> EV8 was ment to use 125 nm and run at 2 GHz.
>
> How would a EV7z/8 shrinked from 180/125 nm to 65 or 32 nm performed ?
> And with 24 Mb on-die cache (as Tukwila) instead of 1.75 (3 for EV8) ?
>
> The highest clock speed for an 180 nm Itanium (McKinley) was 1.0 GHz.
>
> Ah well... :-)

All valid points but we also know that die shrinks mean less silicon
which, according to Moore's law, means either: lower cost for the
customer, increased profit for the manufacturer, or some mid-point in
between. Intel has invested (spent? wasted?) a lot of money on
Itanium. Maybe this is their last kick at the cat to recover that
money.

NSR