Chip giant Intel has officially launched the latest additions to the XScale IOP family - including the 81348 which boasts eight high-speed hard disc access ports. At the Intel Developer Forum in San Franciso, the 1.2Ghz ARM-compatible CPUs were today touted as storage processors aimed at servers for small to medium businesses.The IOP348 features one core running at either 667MHz, 800MHz or 1.2GHz with support for PCI-Express, PCI-X, and up to 2GB of 533Mhz DDR2 RAM. The IOP342 features two 1.2GHz cores in its chip package, along with 1MB of on-chip RAM, while the IOP341 has just one processor core. Prices per chip range from $53 to $152, or about 27 to 80 quid, and production is expected to be ramped up in the final quarter of 2006.
This evening, we asked Castle's John Ballance if he had any thoughts on how CTL might use the new chips. He replied: "I have many, of course. These are the devices you featured earlier, just nearer to reality." The Castle Iyonix, launched four years ago this week, is powered the 600MHz IOP321 processor.
More to follow later.
Links
Intel IOP range