Remember in the last week I'd told you about the upcoming Intel Itanium "Tukwila" processor? Well, today Intel officially introduced Itanium 9300 processor series. The most interesting thing about this chip is that it more than double the performance of its predecessor! The two-billion transistor Itanium processor 9300 series is a quad core processor with eight threads per processor (through enhanced Intel Hyper-Threading Technology), more cache, up to 800 percent the interconnect bandwidth, up to 500 percent the memory bandwidth, and up to 700 percent the memory capacity using-industry standard DDR3 components.

The processor's advanced machine-check architecture coordinates error handling across the hardware, firmware and operating system, and improves system availability by enabling recovery from otherwise fatal errors.

The Itanium 9300 processor also employs the second generation of Intel Virtualization Technology to improve performance and robustness. Its Intel 7500 chipset can directly assign I/O devices to virtual machines, further boosting efficiency.

The Intel Itanium processor 9300 series ranges in price from $946 to $3,838 in quantities of 1,000. OEM systems are expected to ship within 90 days.