A high-end server chip, which is being considered as the world's first 2 billion transistor microprocessor, originally expected as earlier as in year 2007, has been delayed by Intel.

It has been learnt that basically, Tukwila is a quad-core update to the Itanium processor that has had a less-than-promising run since the time the original version was announced back in 2001.

A statement issued by Intel specified on Thursday, "Intel has made some engineering enhancements to the Tukwila platform."

It has also been learnt that since Tukwila and its follow-on processors on the Itanium roadmap, Poulson and Kittson, will be socket compatible, as one enhancement. Furthermore, a new technology dubbed as scalable buffered memory has also been introduced by Intel to Tukwila platforms.

However, the amount of CPU pins, which can be dedicated to a memory interface, is limited. By connecting to multiple DDR3 RDIMMs (Registered Dual In-line Memory Modules) for each CPU memory interface, scalable buffered memory acts as a memory expander. With this technology, the total memory capacity is enhanced as compared to natively attached memory configurations.

A spokesperson from Intel said, "Validation testing of the Tukwila processor with the new memory will move the Tukwila platform launch from early '09 to mid '09."