BANGALORE, INDIA: Intel will unveil a new two-billion transistor, quad-core Itanium microprocessor codenamed Tukwila -- aimed at the enterprise and server space -- at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco this week.

The chip is based on 65-nanometer technology, as opposed to Intel's new 45-nanometer technology. Tukwila's successor, codenamed "Poulson" is expected around 2010.

Reports said, "It (Tukwila) operates at speeds of up to 2Ghz, the equivalent of a standard PC chip." Tukwila is likely to be launched later this year or early 2009.

Intel had released the first processor to contain more than one billion transistors in 2006. IBM followed it up in 2007, with the "world's fastest commercial chip" that operates at 4.7Ghz.

Intel's next-generation x86 processor, Nehalem, is due later this year.