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Intel On Track For 32 nm Manufacturing

Posted by samzenpus on from the wafer-thin dept.

yaksha writes "Intel said on Wednesday that it has completed the development phase of its next manufacturing process that will shrink chip circuits to 32 nanometers. The milestone means that Intel will be able to push faster, more efficient chips starting in the fourth quarter. In a statement, Intel said it will provide more technical details at the International Electron Devices Meeting next week in San Francisco. Bottom line: Shrinking to a 32 nanometer is one more step in its 'tick tock' strategy, which aims to create a new architecture with new manufacturing process every 12 months. Intel is obviously betting that its rapid-fire advancements will produce performance gains so jaw dropping that customers can't resist."

3 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Chipsets by lobiusmoop · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's great that Intel are working on die shrinks for their processors, but I wish they would do the same for their support chipsets. It's annoying that on most laptops the northbridge for Atom processors uses more power than the processor does.

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    1. Re:Chipsets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This should be partially alleviated once the i7 architecture is fully adopted. Pretty much no more north bridge. That's probably why they're neglecting the current chip set technology with more aggressive updates.

      And who knows, if a better chip interconnect comes around in the next generation (unlikely, but possible), Intel could start putting more and more in the CPU package. Things like a Larrabee GPU and south bridge functionality (audio, networking, general I/O). System on a chip is common place in embedded systems now. If Intel wants to eat ARM's lunch they're going to have to adopt some of the same techniques.

  2. Re:What about AMD? by afidel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually I think the biggest post P3 improvement has been the move to dual core as standard on the desktop in the last couple years. At least on Windows the non-blocking nature with a stalled thread is huge for overall system performance and UI snapiness. It's great to be able to get those benefits without a $200 motherboard and two CPU's =)

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