Montvale: a disappointment that could threaten the Itanium ecosystem

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The Register is reporting on the speeds and feeds for the new Montvale processor, and it doesn’t look good.

Intel’s new Itanium will weigh in at 1.66 GHz, just .06 GHz faster than what you can buy today. There are some other minor tweaks, like a faster front side bus will be faster (up to 667 MHz from 533) and new power management features, but companies in the Itanium ecosystem are going to have a tough marketing challenge as they compete for new business against Power6 today and 16-core Rock processors from Sun next year.

HP, SGI, Bull and others are in for a long ride if they’re going to try and ride their Itanium businesses profitably in the next year. Intel isn’t expected to have a significant jump in its Itanium line until the end of 2008 when the four core Tukwila is expected (don’t expect to see products until 2009).

If you’re interested The Reg also has a piece on the impact of this announcement on HP’s product roadmaps.

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