Intel will release a pair of Itanium 2 processors designed for rack-mounted servers and clusters on Monday as it attempts to expand the chip family's reach.

The Low Voltage Itanium 2, formerly code-named Deerfield, and a scaled-down version of the latest Itanium 2 chip are largely designed to fit inside two-processor servers where cost, space and energy consumption are paramount concerns.

All three factors are important in clusters, which can consist of a few thousand computers strung together for mainframe-class tasks, or in relatively low-cost servers dedicated to a few specific tasks, such as handling authentication for a large Web site.

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