A SMALLER 32nm CHIP DEVELOPED BY INTEL

Intel on Wednesday said it finished development work on manufacturing technology that will allow it to produce chips with circuitry just 32-nanometers in size, a billionth of a meter, by the fourth quarter of next year.
The new production technology will enable the company to lower costs and power consumption in chips, while adding more speed and functionality. In general, microprocessing speeds are directly related to the number of transistors on a chip, and the smaller the transistor, the more can be packed together on a single chip die. Smaller production technology lowers costs by enabling companies to increase output.
The development also means Intel will for the fourth consecutive time match its "tick-tock" strategy, a target to introduce an entirely new microprocessor architecture alternating with new production technology roughly every twelve months.
At a technical conference later this month, Intel engineers plan to detail how they will transition from the current crop of 45-nanometer processors to chips that are built on a new 32-nm manufacturing process. Intel is developing this new line of processors under the code name “Westmere,” and Intel plans to bring the first of these 32-nm microprocessors to the market in late 2009. At the same conference, IBM and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing also plan to detail their efforts at developing and manufacturing 32- and 22-nm processors.

INTEL TO SHIP NEHALEM CHIPS ON NOV. 17

Intel has scheduled the launch of its first Nehalem chip for Nov. 17, which also will be the day several PC makers begin shipping desktops running the new processor.
Steve Smith, vice president and director of operations for Intel's digital enterprise group, told Computerworld earlier this week that the first Nehalem chip, officially named Core i7, will be a quad-core designed for high-end desktops used by power users and gamers. Intel has been shipping previews of the chips to hardware vendors since September.
Rob Enderle, an analyst at the Enderle Group, said this week that he's been test-driving an Intel-built desktop running the quad-core chip with the hyper threading turned on, so it's virtually an eight-core. "It's fast. It's really fast," said Enderle.
The analyst also noted that the chip shows "significant improvement" in power efficiency, a key requirement for high-performance computing.
The Nehalem architecture features a 45-nanometer, four-core processor with an integrated memory controller that eliminates the need for a front-side bus. The new architecture is modular, which officials say will make it easier to scale from two to eight cores.
The Core i7 chips also are being designed to have two-way, simultaneous multi-threading, use Intel's QuickPath interconnect, and have a three-level cache hierarchy, Intel said.
Smith said an eight-core Nehalem is slated to ship in the second half of 2009, while two-core and four-core Nehalem chips for laptops should ship at about the same time.