Intel Corp. revealed Thursday the prices for its Itanium 64-bit processor, which comes in four models, featuring two different clock speeds and two Level 2 memory cache sizes.
Cache size, rather than clock speed, seems to be the deciding factor in pricing the chips. Both the 800MHz and 733MHz processors with 4MB of L2 cache are priced at $6,340.50. Meanwhile, the price of the 800MHz offering with only 2MB of cache drops more than 50 per cent to $2,970. The 733MHz Itanium with 2MB of cache costs $1,765.50. Prices are per chip for 1,000-unit quantities.
As co-developer of the processor, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) recently became the first company to roll out servers and workstations based on Itanium. A single processor Itanium i2000 workstation from HP costs around $12,000. Other vendors, including Dell Computer Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and IBM Corp. are all expected to begin selling their Itanium-based servers and workstations by the end of the year.
All prices are in Canadian dollars.
Intel, in Santa Clara, Calif., can be reached at http://www.intel.com/.