eWeek: Although the new Itanium 9300 series chips have been shipping for over a week, Intel officially released the processors on Monday. Codenamed Tukwila, the chips feature twice as many cores, an 800 percent improvement in interconnect bandwidth, 500 percent more memory bandwidth and up to 700 percent more memory capacity than their predecessors.
Intel originally planned to release the new product more than two years ago. "We know there were a few delays over the years, but we felt it was better to get this right for those mission-critical customers, and we think we have," said Intel's Kirk Skaugen.