How Does The Intel Itanium 9300 Compare With The Competition?

As for the Fujitsu SPARC64 VII, this quad core processor can handle two threads on up to 64-sockets (that's 512 threads in all per server) with a maximum clock speed of 2.52GHz.

The top of the range M9000 delivers SPEC int_rate/fp_rate of 2586 and 2103.

The next version, Venus SPARC64 VIIIfx, is set to push the performance barrier even further with 256 threads per socket (8 cores x 8 threads), a 128GFLOPS performance and using a 45nm manufacturing process.

It was already available as a prototype last year and let's hope it will be available soon.

We don't have the benchmark for the Itanium 9300 but Intel said that the performance would be more than twice that of the previous "Montvale" generation. What does that give us?

A 128-socket, 256-core computer handling 256 threads (SGI Altix 4700 Density System, Itanium 9040 1.6GHz, 18MB cache) is able to yield 2971 and 3507 mark on SPEC2006 int_rate/fp_rate.

Does that means that a similar configured Tukwila platform would be able to smash the 6000 and 7000 SPEC2006 int_rate/fp_rate mark?

Highly unlikely and it is also quite interesting to see that an x86 system like the Dell PowerEdge R905 (24 cores running at 2.6Ghz, costing £12819+VAT) has a SPEC2006 int_rate/fp_rate mark of 400 and 276. By comparison, the cheapest Power7 systems, a 32-core model, costs at least $101,000 direct from IBM.