ZD Net UK reported some very interesting details about further life of 64bit Intel Itanium CPU family. They guys claim that Intel has two more new cores on the roadmap: Montecito and Chivano. They both will be used in Itanium family and will use some architectural peculiarities ... of Alpha processors (Alpha’s intellectual property as well as a hundred of Alpha developers were purchased by Intel from Compaq last June). And now let’s go into some details concerning Intel’s plans on Itanium.

As we have already told you, the first successor of Itanium (Merced), McKinley, is already produced in limited quantities and should start producing in mass in Q2 2002. ZD Net claims that McKinley will be made with 0.18micron manufacturing technology, which means that the working frequencies of Itanium processor built on this core will hardly exceed the initially planned 1GHz.

After McKinley we should see Madison scheduled for 2003. This processor will be made with 0.13micron technology and will work at 1.2GHz-1.6GHz core clock frequency.

And then, after the launching of Montecito, Itanium chips should acquire Alpha technologies. Moreover, Montecito is expected to feature Hyperthreading technology. This processor core is scheduled for 2004. ZD Net guys suppose that this core will be produced with 0.13micron manufacturing technology. However, by that time Intel is expected to have its finer 0.09micron technology ready (see this news story), therefore we wouldn’t state anything with 100% certainty.

Another even more mysterious processor is Chivano, which is due some time in 2005 and 2006. It is reported to comprise two fully functional processor cores grown on a single die. Chivano will be made with 0.09micron though Intel should start using 0.065micron technology in 2005 already.

And a couple of more interesting things for your reference:

• In 1997 Digital Equipment (Alphs processors developer) sued Intel for the violation of intellectual property rights in respect to Alpha. The companies managed to solve this matter peacefully, and Intel purchased a fab from Digital in Hudson (Mass.), which was exactly the one producing Alphas. Also they acquired intellectual property for StrongArm chips.
• In 1998 Digital Equipment was purchased by Compaq.
• In 2001 Intel purchased from Compaq the intellectual property for Alpha processors together with a hundred of engineers.
• We should also remember that Alpha engineers (Dirk Meyer and Fred Weber) are on AMD’s part, being the leading developers of Athlon family and the upcoming 64bit Hammer processors.
• And now it’s high time Intel started implementing Alpha technologies in its CPUs...