SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Intel Corp. today announced the first of its Coppermine microprocessors in the Xeon family, an 800-MHz product for workstations and servers.
The chip, which integrates 256 kilobytes of on-chip cache, is designed for "two-way" systems that pair two processors, either in traditional minitower configurations or in new rack-mounted chassis.
Existing Xeon products for 4-, 8-, 16-, and 64-way systems use up to 2 megabytes of discrete Level 2 cache for increased performance. Anthony Ambrose, director of marketing for IA-32 products at Intel's Microprocessor Division, said similar Coppermine products would be forthcoming during 2000. "It's going to be a busy year," he promised.
The new Xeon drops the Single-Edge Cartridge Connector version 2 (SECC2) packaging in favor of a 330-pin version, dubbed SE330, which Intel will also use for 4- and 8-way Xeon configurations, Ambrose said.
The chip, Ambrose said, is in full production. In December, Intel moved up its 800-MHz desktop announcement, originally slated for January, as part of a marketing effort against rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (see Dec. 20, 1999, story). However, supplies of the desktop version were extremely tight at the announcement date, and remain so.
That apparently is not the case with the Xeon. "We've got as many as you want," Ambrose said.
The 800-MHz Xeon costs $901 in 1,000-unit lots.
