by Agam Shah (IDG News Service)
Intel’s eight-core Nehalem EX server processor will include a technology derived from its high-end Itanium chips that helps to reduce data corruption and ensure reliable server performance, the company said Tuesday.
The processor will include an error correction feature called MCA Recovery, which will detect and fix errors that could otherwise cause systems to crash, said Boyd Davis, general manager of Intel’s server platforms marketing group, at a press conference.
The chip will be able to detect system errors originating in the CPU or system memory and work with the operating system to correct them. That could help make systems more fault tolerant and provide greater uptime, he said.
Error correction is a feature Intel includes in its high-end Itanium chips, designed for servers that require very high levels of availability. Itanium uses a different instruction set to x86 server chips and competes more with RISC-based processors like Sun’s Sparc and IBM’s Power.
