Intel revealed its Itanium 9300 series today, which more than doubles the performance of its predecessor. Codenamed Tukwila, the new four-core design packs two billion transistors and boasts an 800% increase in system interconnect bandwidth, as much as a 500% gain in memory bandwidth, and up to 700% more memory capacity.

The Itanium 9300 and Intel's upcoming "Nehalem EX" Xeon processor share several platform ingredients, including the Intel QuickPath Interconnection, Scalable Memory Interconnect, 7500 Scalable Memory Buffer, and 7500 chipset. Intel says its 9300-series CPUs feature advanced machine-check architecture manages errors through the hardware, firmware and OS, allowing recovery from otherwise fatal errors.


The Itanium 9300 also employs second-gen Intel Virtualization Technology, an enhanced form of Demand-Based Switching for power savings, Turbo Boost, Hyper-Threading, and are binary-compatible with existing software. Pricing on the 9300 line ranges from $946 to $3,838 and chips are being sold in quantities of 1,000. OEM systems should ship within 90 days.