Intel yesterday described how it could combine four Itanium 2 cores that share a large cache memory to create a processor with more than 1 billion transistors. In a keynote address at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, Intel's John Crawford said such a design is "imminently doable" from a die-size and manufacturing standpoint and that "we would expect something of this nature coming out." Crawford did not disclose specific plans for such a processor, though he said Intel will be able to design and build a 1-billion-transistor microprocessor using 65-nanometer process technology by 2007. Crawford went on to describe a hypothetical processor that would contain four Itanium 2 cores and 12 to 16 megabytes of shared cache memory, all connected through a leaf interconnect scheme. Each Itanium 2 processor would contain about 120 million transistors while the cache would carry 700 million to 950 million transistors, bringing the total transistor budget to well over 1 billion, he said. View complete article: EET