By Sharon Gaudin
After about a year of delays, Intel Corp. today took the wrappers off its high-end Itanium processor, which is code-named Tukwila.

The new Itanium 9300 processor originally was slated to be released early in 2009, but that timetable slipped twice last year. The timing turned out to benefit Intel a bit, because Tukwila ended up arriving on the same day as IBM’s long-anticipated new Power7 processor.

“It’s good that Intel finally stepped up and delivered Tukwila and that the chip is shipping with the promised tweaks that caused the delays,” said Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc. “However, competitors haven’t been standing still. IBM had two revs of its Power processor during this time, with the second rev coming out today. So Intel is still playing catch-up in this market.”

Full Story