Intel announces milestone in shrinking chips
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SAN JOSE, Calif. Semiconductor company Intel says it has made a breakthrough development in shrinking the size of chips. The Santa Clara-based company announced today it has created a fully functional 70 megabit
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Intel Corp.  will make chips with four processing cores in November the world's biggest microchip maker said on Tuesday as it tries to maintain a lead over rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc..
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(InfoWorld) - Following theÂ launch of Intel's quad-core Xeon 7300 processorÂ on Wednesday, the company's efforts are now focused on preparations for the rollout of its first Penryn chips later this year. And there are signs the company is planning an early 2008 release of its Silverthorne chip for ultramobile PCs and handheld devices. Intel confirmed plans to release a server version of Penryn before the end of this year, but the company is releasing little information about its plans for mobile and desktop versions of the chip. Penryn will offer better performance than Intel's current processors, and the company is counting on them to hold off any gains rival Advanced Micro DevicesÂ makes with theÂ release of its quad-core Barcelona chipsÂ next week. "So far what we've said is that we intend to ship a broad family of 45-nanometer processors by the end of the year," said Nick Jacobs, an Intel spokesman in Singapore, referring to the technology used to produce theÂ Penryn chips. Penryn is the code name given to the 45-nanometer "shrink" of Intel's current chip designs, which are now produced using a 65-nanometer process. These numbers refer to the average size of the features that can be created on a silicon chip, and smaller is considered better for several reasons, including cost. Making the size of features smaller allows chip makers to reduce the chip's overall size, which reduces unit manufacturing costs since more chips can be made on a single silicon wafer. Chips made using a more advanced manufacturing process can also consume less power and run faster than those made using an older process. In the case of Penryn, Intel will take advantage of the ability to shrink the features of a chip to cram more memory cells into its processors, increasing the on-chip cache size and further boosting performance. The first Penryn processors are widely expected to come in November, but Intel has yet to announce exactly when the launch will happen. In addition to the release of Penryn chips for servers later this year, Intel is expected to release the Yorkfield and Wolfdale desktop variants of Penryn in early 2008, with some speculating that high-end versions of these desktop chips could arrive before the end of this year. Intel is holding off on the release of mobile Penryn chips until early next year, when the company plans to update its Centrino platform for notebooks. Dunnington, a chip designed for servers with four or more processors, will round out Intel's Penryn lineup. Set for release in late 2008, Dunnington will replace the Xeon 7300 chips that Intel announced Wednesday. Intel is also readying Silverthorne for launch next year. Produced using a 45-nanometer process, the dual-core Silverthorne chip is very small, allowing 2,500 chips to be produced on a single wafer to help keep costs low. The chip is designed for low power consumption and comes bundled with a single-chip chipset called Poulsbo. Intel originally planned to release Silverthorne during the second half of next year. But the company moved the chip's release date to the "first half of 2008." That timeframe could mean anything from January until the end of June, but one Intel source said the chip is likely to come sooner rather than later within that timeframe. Asked about an early 2008 release date for Silverthorne, Jacobs would only confirm the chip's planned release is on track for the first half of the year. Â
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(InfoWorld) - Intel said Tuesday it will ramp up performance and energy efficiency in its microprocessors by using a 32-nanometer process technology starting in 2009. During a keynote at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini showed a 300mm wafer built using the 32-nm manufacturing technology. The chip will house more than 1.9 billion transistors and its increased performance will enable "true to life entertainment and real-life graphics capabilities," Otellini said in his keynote. The chips will be an upgrade over processors built using the 45-nm process Intel is incorporating in its Penryn processor, due in November, and Silverthorne and Nehalem processors, slated to appear early and in the second half of next year, respectively. Intel currently uses a 65-nm process to manufacture chips, and Penryn is the code name given to the 45-nm "shrink" of Intel's current chip designs. The measurements refer to the size of the features on the silicon chip. In the first public demonstration of the Nehalem processor, Otellini said it will deliver better performance per watt and better system performance through its QuickPath Interconnect system architecture, which will include an integrated memory controller and improved communication links between system components. Otellini also announced a Penryn dual-core processor operating at 25 watts that will be available on the upcoming Montevina platform, which will also include WiMax technology. To meet multiple computing needs, Otellini said Intel also plans to introduce 15 new 45-nm processors by the end of the year and 20 in the first quarter of 2008. Intel isn't the first to announce 32-nm chip technology. In May, a group of chipmakers led by IBM agreed to further collaborate to jointly develop 32-nm semiconductor production technology. Other companies in the collaboration include Freescale Semiconductor, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Infineon Technologies, and Samsung Electronics. There was nothing surprising in Otellini's keynote, said Doug Freedman, an analyst at American Technology Research. Intel's road map tends to be conservative, and the company is well on track to meeting its time line, he said. With the new chips, users will continue to get more processing performance at a similar price point, he said.
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Moore's Law continues to mandate that the transitor must be shrunken. But as Intel CEO Paul Otellini admitted tonight at CES, had it not been for a key innovation, Mr. Moore might have found himself out-lawed.
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The number of companies building processors is likely to shrink, researcher says.
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Intel has overhauled the basic building block of the information age, paving the way for faster and more energy-efficient processors.
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Intel develops a new chip that roughly doubles the number of transistors on a chip.
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Advanced Micro Devices plans to demonstrate its version of a new approach to processor design, with a chip that is expected to offer faster computing and relatively less power consumption.
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Intel Corp., the world&#39;s biggest semiconductor maker, said it built a test chip with a new process that creates faster circuits by packing 10 million transistors into an area the size of the tip of a ball-point pen.
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Intel has unveiled a compressed RFID chip that the company said can hold 90% of the components typically used in bulky RFID readers typically used today.
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Intel Corp , the world's  largest chipmaker, will be able to make microprocessors with  features as small as 32 nanometers within two years, its chief  executive said on Tuesday.
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Intel have announced that they&#39;ve produced a fully functioning memory chip using 35 nanometer transistors. The breakthrough, etching components that are 30% smaller than current processes, should be delivering
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Intel has shrunk a processor that will be incorporated into new ultrathin laptops, possibly creating competition for the chip in the MacBook Air laptop.
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Intel Corp. will announce today that it has built a fully functional test-memory chip that contains more than 500 million transistors using next- generation semiconductor manufacturing technology.
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Chips with features at 32nm use less electricity, allowing vendors to pack more processing power in their products.
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Intel creates a more powerful memory chip without increasing its size, confounding warnings that the firm had hit its technical limits.