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New Itanium chip unveiled
TAKING aim at the high-end server chip market, Intel has introduced its third Itanium processor, the Madison, and Xeon processor MP. The company has hopes the new chip will breathe life into sales of its Itanium line, which only now is beginning to see momentum in the marketplace.
“The combination of our two enterprise architectures has addressed the diverse needs of enterprise computing from top to bottom,” said Paul Otellini, Intel president and chief operating officer.
Intel says the Madison is a new and improved Itanium chip. With a clock speed of 1.5GHz, the Madison offers “about to 30 to 50 per cent higher performance,” than its predecessor, the 1GHz McKinley.
The 32-bit Intel Xeon processor MP 2.80GHz is compatible with existing Intel Xeon processor MP-based platforms and delivers up to 10 per cent or greater performance over its predecessor and better transaction-processing performance than comparable RISC-based platforms at half the cost per transaction.
The Itanium 2 processor with 6MB of integrated level three (L3) cache at 1.50GHz, the Itanium 2 processor with 4MB of L3 cache at 1.40GHz, and the Itanium 2 processor with 3MB of L3 cache at 1.30GHz are priced at $4,226, $2,247 and $1,338 in 1,000-unit quantities, respectively.
The Intel Xeon processor MP at 2.80GHz with 2 MB of L3 cache, the Intel Xeon processor MP at 2.50GHz with 1 MB of L3 cache and the Intel Xeon processor MP at 2.0GHz with 1MB of L3 cache are priced at $3,692, $1,980 and $1,177 in 1,000-unit quantities, respectively.
New SOAP version released
The World Wide Web Consortium has released the latest version of SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), a key specification in emerging web services standards.
SOAP is a protocol for exchanging information between different computing systems via extensible markup language, or XML.
The loosely coupled integration method is used as an alternative to proprietary application programming interfaces.
The SOAP Version 1.2 Recommendation released means the W3C believes the specification is stable, contributes to web interoperability and has been reviewed and approved by W3C members.
A recommendation is the W3C’s equivalent of a web standard.
SOAP 1.2 resolves more than 400 technical and editorial issues related to the previous specifications, the W3C said.
Oracle’s Linux migration tool
Oracle has introduced a new tool for migrating existing Oracle E-Business Suite applications from any current platform to the open-source Linux OS.
Oracle’s Linux Platform Migration Utility, which will be available in July free of charge, retains the exact patch level as well as many of an application’s customizations, “eliminating the need for database synchronization or re-tooling,” said Oracle.
AMD rounds out Opteron line
Advanced Micro Devices expanded its range of Opteron processors last Monday, adding the 800 series for eight-way servers and the 100 series for single-processor servers, the company said in a release.
The release of the Opteron 800 and Opteron 100 series processors completes the initial lineup of Opteron processors that AMD announced in April, and represents the rest of the Sunnyvale, California, company’s strategy for selling more of its chips to the enterprise market. AMD released the Opteron 200 series for two-way servers at its launch event in April.
As part of announcement last Monday, AMD unveiled its Validated Server Program (VSP). This program is designed to let smaller system vendors have access to manufacturing expertise and technical support for Opteron servers that they would be otherwise unable to provide themselves, an AMD spokesperson said.
AMD is partnering with manufacturing company Celestica to offer VSP participants the choice of partially assembled or fixed configuration Opteron 800 and Opteron 200 servers.
Service Pack 4 for Win2K
Microsoft has released Service Pack 4 for Windows 2000, which bundles all updates and patches for the operating system released since Service Pack 3 last July.
Service Pack 4 does not bring any new features to Windows 2000. It includes all security fixes and driver updates released since Microsoft shipped Service Pack 3 and is meant for customers who don’t apply all the updates when they are released, but want to do maintenance on their own schedule, O’Brien says.
Users can download it free of charge from Microsoft’s web site. — Dawn ScienceDotcom Report
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