12 Datasheet
Introduction
1.3 Mixing Processors of Different Frequencies and
Cache Sizes
All Itanium 2 processors on the same system bus are required to have the same cache size (9 MB,
6 MB, 4 MB, 3 MB or 1.5 MB) and identical core frequency. Mixing components of different core
frequencies and cache sizes is not supported and has not been validated by Intel. Operating system
support for multiprocessing with mixed components should also be considered.
While Intel has done nothing to specifically prevent processors within a multiprocessor
environment from operating at differing frequencies and differing cache sizes, there may be
uncharacterized errata that exist in such configurations. Customers would be fully responsible for
validation of system configurations with mixed components other than the supported
configurations described above.
1.4 Terminology
In this document, a ‘#’ symbol after a signal name refers to an active low signal. This means that a
signal is in the active state (based on the name of the signal) when driven to a low level. For
example, when RESET# is low, a processor reset has been requested. When NMI is high, a non-
maskable interrupt has occurred. In the case of lines where the name does not imply an active state
but describes part of a binary sequence (such as address or data), the ‘#’ symbol implies that the
signal is inverted. For example, D[3:0] = ‘HLHL’ refers to a hex ‘A’, and D [3:0] # = ‘LHLH’ also
refers to a hex ‘A’ (H = High logic level, L = Low logic level).
The term “system bus” refers to the interface between the processor, system core logic and other
bus agents. The system bus is a multiprocessing interface to processors, memory and I/O.
A signal name has all capitalized letters, for example, VCTERM.
A symbol referring to a voltage level, current level, or a time value carries a plain subscript, e.g.,
V
CC,core
, or a capitalized abbreviated subscript, for example, T
CO
.
1.5 State of Data
The data contained in this document is subject to change. It is the best information that Intel is able
to provide at the publication date of this document.