Intel reveals new 64-bit chip

SAN FRANCISCO--Intel will come out with a chip next quarter that adds 64-bit power to its current x86 line of processors, the company's chief executive said Tuesday.

In a keynote speech at the Intel Developer Forum here, CEO Craig Barrett called the arrival of Nocona "one of the worst-kept secrets in San Francisco." Intel had been widely expected to show off such a chip.

Nocona processors for two-processor servers will arrive in the second quarter, Barrett said, followed quickly by Prescott processors with 32/64-bit capability for single-processor servers and workstations. Prescott and Nocona are functionally the same processor but differ in cache size and bus speed. The 32/64-bit technology will then come to chips for servers with four or more processors in 2005, Barrett added. (Technically, the chips are code-named Nocona and Prescott, and the 32/64-bit capability goes by the code name Clackamas.)

Although this means that Intel could bring a 32/64-bit chip to PCs soon, Barrett said the company has no plans do so in the near future. There are a few good reasons for this, PC executives and analysts have said for some time. Very little desktop software exists for 64-bit desktops, and the amount of memory that would go into a 64-bit desktop would greatly escalate the price.

While Intel was expected to reveal its 32/64-bit plans at the conference, the chips are set to come out far earlier than most predicted. Most analysts thought that Intel's first 32/64-bit chip would be Tejas, due late in 2004 or early 2005. In December, one analyst, Rick Whittington of American Technology Research, predicted that Intel would release a 32/64-bit chip this year but admitted at the time that he had no solid evidence to back up the theory.

Nocona will use the same core as Prescott, Intel's current desktop processor, meaning that Intel could quickly migrate the 64-bit architecture to desktop processors.

During his keynote, Barrett demonstrated a 64-bit x86 chip running on a Dell Dimension XPS desktop machine.

The move to add 64-bit extensions to the existing x86 architecture is a long time in coming for Intel. Rival AMD has been taking such an approach for a while, having already shipped both its Opteron server chips and its Athlon 64 desktop processors.

Intel, meanwhile, resisted such a move, trying to spur the market for its new 64-bit architecture, known as Itanium. Itanium is not directly compatible with today's x86 software, but it can run such programs through a slower emulation mode.

"Their hand was forced," said Anil Vasudeva, an analyst at Imex Research. Still, Vasudeva said the opportunity for chips like Nocona is much larger than that for Itanium.

Although the move may hurt its Itanium strategy, analysts say Intel faces no legal obstacles in adopting AMD's approach.

Among other things, adding 64-bit instructions enables support for more than 4GB of memory.

Microsoft will support Intel's new architecture in the second half of 2004, a Microsoft representative said. Versions of the Linux operating system from Red Hat, SuSE Linux, and MontaVista Software will support it in the second half, Barrett added.

Novell's SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 is scheduled to arrive in July, with support for Intel's 64-bit extensions, spokesman Joe Eckert said. A beta version is due in March, he added.

Intel's approach is compatible with AMD's, the Microsoft representative said. "There will be one operating system that will support all (64-bit) extended systems," the representative said.

Barrett concurred, noting that the design of the chips from the two companies will differ but that software and OSes for this market "probably, for the most part, will run on both systems."

Intel and AMD entered into an extensive cross-licensing deal in 1995 that largely will insulate Intel from legal liability in this area, according to legal experts.