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Intel Makes 45nm Chip
dolphinlover writes "Intel announced today that it created its first microchip using the 45 nanometer manufacturing process that it says will go into its processors in the second half of 2007. Intel said that this development provides it with a 'considerable lead over our competitors in the 45-nanometer generation'."
I heard that AMD will be shipping their first 65nm products in late 2006 and have heard nothing about 45nm production.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
AMD has traditionally been behind Intel on the bleeding edge fab stuff. Intel's dominated the fab tech race by six months or so for years and years. That is not changing here, as far as anyone I know of can see. AMD using SOI sort of blurs the line here, but in terms of process shrinks and the like Intel's ahead.
AMD's chips being better performers despite being behind some in chip fab is an important feature. But roadmaps based on imaginary pixie dust, in an industry where fabs cost $4 billion or so, are a waste of time even on slashdot.
Unless I misplaced a decimal point or misunderstand physics, isn't 45 nm only a very few generations from needing connections only one molecule thick?
It seams to make sense that because Intel has the most money, that they can spend money on developing better manufacturing and engineering techniques than their competition. But with all of this extra money, and seamingly having better technological capabilities, AMD is still beating out Intel as far as performance.
Looks like Intel basically does all of the hard work figuring out how to do things for the first time, and AMD just has to wait until Intel is finished and then just learn from them. I of course know nothing about how to make processors, but it seams that this is the most plausible reason why Intel has trouble making chips that are as good as AMD.
This news about the 45nm manufacturing looks very bad for AMD, but I doubt it will matter very much. If Intel is doing it by the end of 2007, AMD will probably be doing it by first or second quarter 2008. And if history is any indicator, they will probably be doing it better. But I guess time will tell, maybe this 45nm technique really is too hard for a company without endless money to figure out.
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-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Yes, when AMD came to my school 45 nm was set for 2008, 65nm for later this year I believe.
I'd say you're mostly right. I think Intel will be positioned as the desktop / lower-end / lower-priced processor, and AMD will dominate the market for servers. Sort of a role reversal from the case before. Unless Intel comes up with something like AMD's direct connect architecture and hypertransport, AMD will continue to dominate I/O performance, even if Intel does eclipse them in the standard user benchmarks. I don't personally care who I buy from at work, but at least as it is now, the Opterons are the only thing allowed in the rack for new systems, and Intel chips for laptops. Desktops don't matter as much, so it's mostly Semprons at the moment (best bang for little bucks). As soon as Intel really abandons the MHz/GHz = performance mantra and realizes that the northbridge is their biggest drawback, they'll turn it around. The mobile chips and the Core Duo are a good start, but we'll see if they stick with them.
I saw a quote somewhere from an exec at AMD, who was asked how the Pentium 4 could be improved on. He said: "Use the Pentium III". The sooner Intel realizes he was right (mobile/Core chips are more closely related to the PIII than P4), the better.
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.