Intel 300 mm, 45 nm Facility Opens in Arizona
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The second of four production facilities for Intel's 45 nm semiconductors is now online, with the opening of the company's entirely new Fab 32 in Chandler, Arizona. Built specifically to use the company's breakthrough HK+MG manufacturing process, Fab 32 represents the beginning of the big payoff of Intel's restructuring.
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Researchers with the University of California at Santa Barbara, working in conjunction with Intel, are preparing to announce today the next step in their joint plans to produce an entirely solid-state photonic processor assembly - a chip which processes data as light waves.
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Intel is moving into high-volume production of its 45-nanometer chips for servers, PCs, and mobile devices.
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The glass-encased room inside Intel Corp.&#039;s microchip factory here, with its shiny, metallic surfaces and frigid air, is a world away from the blistering sun and brown earth outside. An army of robots suspended from the vast ceiling glide from one refrigerator-sized machine to the next. Their cargo: thousands of 12-inch silicon platters that form the raw material for Intel&#039;s most sophisticated computer microprocessor to date.
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CHIP FIRM AMD said it is demonstrating a fourway Opteron server using dual processor cores. 90 nanometre technology and silicon on insulator (SOI) technology.
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A chip capable of more than a trillion calculations per second (teraflop) is unveiled by Intel.
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Intel on Thursday is expected to open a new factory to accelerate the production of chips using a 45-nanometer manufacturing process, slated to be used for its&#160;upcoming Penryn chips.The &#39;Fab 32&#39; in Chandler, Arizona, will use the&#160;45nm manufacturing process&#160;to produce chips for servers, PCs, mobile phones, and consumer devices, according to Intel.&quot;The opening of this fab means that we&#39;ve now moved into high-volume production of our 45nm chips,&quot; said Kari Aakre, an Intel spokeswoman. Intel&#39;s been making 45nm chips for a year now in a development fab in Hillsboro, Oregon, which isn&#39;t high-volume, Aakre said.Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini said last month that Intel plans to introduce 15 new 45nm processors by the end of the year and 20 in the first quarter of 2008. Penryn chips for servers and workstations will be introduced on Nov. 12.Intel will also use the 45nm manufacturing process for Silverthorne, a low-power Intel architecture designed for ultramobile devices, mobile Internet devices and low-cost PCs. Silverthorne chips will appear early next year.Next year it will add factories in Kiryat Gal, Israel and Rio Rancho, New Mexico, to produce 45nm chips. The new fabs will help Intel meet its projection to ship more 45nm chips than 65-nm chips by the third quarter of 2008, Aakre said.Intel currently ships 65nm chips, and Penryn is the code name given to the 45nm &quot;shrink&quot; of Intel&#39;s current chip designs. The measurements refer to the size of the features on the silicon chip.Penryn&#39;s successor, the 32nm &#39;Nehalem&#39; processor, will appear in 2009. At Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco last month, Otellini demonstrated Nehalem, saying it would deliver better performance-per-watt and better system performance through its QuickPath Interconnect system architecture. Nehalem chips will also include an integrated memory controller and improved communication links between system components.
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Late yesterday afternoon, Intel announced it plans to invest as much as $1.5 billion in the retooling of its Fab 11X production site in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, so that it can produce 45-nanometer CPUs with its newly announced high-K + metal-gate transistor refinement technique during the second half of next year.
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Intel Corp  on Thursday  introduced high-end processors for computer servers to compete  with an upcoming new product from Advanced Micro Devices Inc  .
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InfoWorld - AMD is undaunted by rival Intel's recent headline-grabbing announcements of 45-nanometer processing technology and a deal to supply Xeon chips to Sun Microsystems, an AMD executive said on Monday.
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(InfoWorld) - Intel and Advanced Micro Devices will square off next week at the annual Computex exhibition in Taipei, where many of the world's largest hardware makers will be showing off products slated for release later this year. Computex 2007, which begins on Tuesday, will see Intel launch its P35 Bear Lake chip set and the debut of motherboards featuring the chips from many of Taiwan's top motherboard makers. The chip set handles interaction between the processor and the rest of the computer and Bear Lake promises speedier data paths for performance improvements. Laptop computers based on Santa Rosa, the recently launched version of Intel's Centrino package of chips, should also be prominent. AMD will be talking up itsÂ new Phenom quad-core processor, which was unveiled in mid-May, and the show should see some demonstrations from Taiwanese companies of Phenom-based desktop PCs. Taiwan is home to the world's largest and most important computer hardware makers -- the companies who manufacture the guts of products that typically appear under more famous brand-names -- and Computex is where they show off their newest and most advanced products. The show is an important barometer of hardware trends because Taiwanese companies like Asustek Computer and Hon Hai Precision Industry, which uses the Foxconn brand, supply many of the components and finished computers sold by Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and others. Thus the support of Taiwanese companies -- or lack of it -- can make or break a new technology. This year wireless networking will be one such technology in the spotlight. The emerging 802.11n standard is expected to be seen in many laptop designs, but how fast it might penetrate markets beyond computing, such as wireless multimedia players, will become evident at the show. Computex is also the home turf of Acer, the world's third-largest PC maker. The company doesn't plan any major announcements at the show but its aggressive expansion guarantees that the products on display at its booth will be closely watched. Local newspapers and hardware technology blogs are already full of reports -- confirmed and otherwise -- about what else might be on show in Taipei. The reports say Acer will show mini-PCs based on Intel CPUs and Asustek will show a laptop PC with a "bamboo-like leather" finish and a Linux-based laptop with NAND flash memory and 7-inch LCD. Intel will demonstrate its 45nm quad-core Harpertown server processors and server makers will show both it and the Penryn 45nm processor, the reports said.
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(InfoWorld) - Motherboards that use Intel's 3-series chip sets, codenamed Bear Lake, seem to be everywhere at the Computex exhibition -- signalling they will soon find their way to store shelves and hardware makers around the world. Intel took advantage of the Taiwanese hardware show, which started Tuesday,Â to announceÂ that the first chip sets from the series -- the P35 and G33 -- are now available. And more will come later this year, including the G35 and X38, which Intel plans to start shipping within 90 days. Based on the large number of 3-series motherboard designs developed, Intel expects the new chip sets to catch on quickly and lay the foundation for future processor advances. "They're all going to be able to support quad core from entry-level motherboards on up," said Sean Maloney, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's sales and marketing group. Intel is billing the 3 series as the prelude to its planned launch of the Penryn family of 45-nanometer processors later this year. The new chip sets, which also support the company's existing chips, are needed because Intel has changed the voltage used with Penryn's front-side bus, which connects the chip set to main memory, said Steve Peterson, director of chip set and graphics marketing at Intel. The 3-series chip sets, which all support quad-core processors, are labelled to reflect their respective capabilities. The models labeled with the prefix G include an integrated graphics core, while the P models do not. The X model is the top-of-the-line model and includes the ability to decode Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies. At the low end of the lineup, the G31 is designed specifically for emerging markets. This chip set is basically the same as the G33, but Intel has removed the ability to play high-definition movies, allowing it to reduce the chip set's price.
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(InfoWorld) - One of the biggest rumors to come out of Computex this week is that Intel is developing a new high-end graphics processor, which it will begin sampling to graphics cards makers in Taiwan in the next year or two. Graphics card makers at the show said they've seen no signs of it, however. The rumor follows reports of Intel hiring more graphics chip engineers, and speculation that Intel will have to answer Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD's)Â purchase of GPU maker ATI TechnologiesÂ last year. AMD is developing a family of microprocessors with graphics built in,Â called Fusion. Some also speculate that Intel will need to buy a graphics processor company to bolster its expertise in GPUs. Intel already makes graphics cores, but they are generally used in chip sets for PCs aimed at users who are not looking for high end graphics. In fact, Intel is the world's largest graphics chip maker, but it has never gone after the high-end segment of the business, which has long been dominated by NvidiaÂ and ATI. The only major announcement Intel has made recently about graphics is building the function intoÂ a future multicore chip code-named Larrabee. The chip, which will pack dozens of x86 microprocessors onto a single piece of silicon, is under development. The company may eventually take a swing at the high-end GPU business, but several graphics card makers at Computex say they've seen no sign of such a move yet. "There have been rumors of an Intel GPU for a long time. I haven't seen anything like it yet," said Andy Wu, project engineer in the multimedia division at Micro-Star International, one of Taiwan's largest graphics card makers. "It would be big news if it were true, but it's not real," said Andrew Wei, graphics product manager at Foxconn Technology Group, another graphics card maker. An engineer at Asustek Computer, Taiwan's largest motherboard maker and a major graphics card developer, also denied the existence of an Intel GPU or any hearsay that one might be coming anytime soon. Grace Wang, regional marketing manager for Intel's Asia Pacific platform component group, said Larrabee is the only major graphics project Intel has announced recently, and declined to comment on any other product plans. Intel held 38.7 percent of the graphics chip market at the end of the first quarter, followed by Nvidia with 28.5 percent and AMD with 21.9 percent, according to Jon Peddie Research. Â
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Chinese authorities on Tuesday approved an Intel project to produce chips on 300-millimeter wafers using a 90-nanometer manufacturing process. But because this is advanced technology, U.S. regulators may not agree.
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(InfoWorld) - As Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) race toward smaller, faster chips, the fierce competition is taking its toll as both companies struggle to maintain profit margins by using more efficient manufacturing. At the tiny scale of 45-nanometer transistors and wires, a single speck of dust on a 300-millimeter silicon wafer can destroy an entire processor. Lower manufacturing yields cut into a company's profit margin, reducing the number of functional chips they can sell from each wafer. "As an industry, we're running out of gas at 45-nanometer geometry," said Nick Kepler, vice president of logic technology development for AMD. "We've been unable to scale the size as much as we used to because of leakage. We're still putting transistors closer together, but not shrinking the gates. So geometry shrinks can hurt you now, which they haven't in the past." One problem is that 65-nm and 45-nm chip components have shrunk so far that they are now smaller than the wavelength of the light used to carve those features onto silicon chips. To fight that trend,Â AMD and IBM Corp. said they will use three new technologies to boost manufacturing efficiency. By the second half of 2008, AMD expects to be producing 45-nm chips using immersion lithography, ultra-low-k interconnect dielectrics, and enhanced transistor strain. The companies made the announcement at the International Electron Device Meeting in San Francisco. By inserting liquid instead of air between the projection lens and the wafer, AMD and IBM can reduce the wavelength of the light, giving them a 40 percent gain in resolution compared to dry lithography and allowing them to sell a higher percentage of the hundreds of chips on every wafer, Kepler said. Likewise, IBM plans to produce 65-nm server chips by the second half of 2007, then shrink both server and gaming chips to 45-nm at some point in the future, said Gary Patton, vice president of technology development for IBM's semiconductor research and development center. AMD and IBM have cooperated on chip development since 2003, and last year extended their contract through 2011 to reach the 32-nm and 22-nm chip generations. In response, Intel says that it beat AMD to the market with 65-nm chip sales by more than a year, andÂ has already begun producing samples of its 45-nm "Penryn" quad-core chipÂ for notebooks, desktops and servers. Intel plans to ship those chips in the second half of 2007. Even if AMD improves its manufacturing, Intel is poised to continue its lead in shrinking chip geometries because it has shorter gate lengths and SRAM (static RAM) cell sizes, said Rob Willoner, a technology analyst with Intel's technology and manufacturing group. "People have different meanings when they talk about the 65-nm process. There's not an industry standard," he said. AMD's Opteron chip was a commercial success because its excellent design compensated for poor dimensions at the 90-nm scale, he said. Chips with a greater cache of local memory stored in SRAM cells can avoid the time-intensive process of retrieving data from external sources. At the same conference in San Francisco this week, Intel announced plans to use "floating-body cells" to further increase the amount of on-chip memory, according to published reports. Despite the manufacturing challenges, chip companies continue to build smaller features because of the tremendous performance benefits. By shrinking from 90 nm to 65 nm, Intel chips have double the transistor density while reducing leakage five-fold (at constant performance) and requiring 30 percent less switching power. Â
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LOS ANGELES, Feb 26  â Intel, the chip maker, said on Monday that it would spend $1 billion to $1.5 billion to retool a factory in New Mexico to start making chips with advanced 45-nanometer-wide transistors in the second half of 2008.
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(InfoWorld) - The Chinese government has given Intel permission to build a $2.5 billion chip-manufacturing plant in Dalian, on China's northeastern coast. Intel plans to build a plant that will produce semiconductors, including microprocessors, on 300-millimeter wafers using a 90-nanometer manufacturing process, China's NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission) said in an announcement (in Chinese) on its Web site. The plant will have a monthly production capacity of 52,000 chips, it said. The planned plant will be the first constructed by Intel in China, and it will operate along with test and assembly plants in Shanghai and Chengdu, a city in southwestern China. The NDRC announcement did not say when construction will begin on the plant or when it would begin production. Intel declined to comment on the NDRC announcement. "We haven't made any announcements, and we don't plan to," said Chuck Mulloy, a company spokesman. If the NDRC announcement is accurate, the Dalian plant would be a coup for the Chinese government, which has made the development of the country's semiconductor-manufacturing industry a national priority. The most advanced production technology currently used by Intel is a 65-nanometer process, and the company has plans to begin producing chips using a 45-nanometer process later this year. The lower the number, the smaller the size of the smallest feature that can be created on a chip. Moving to a more advanced production process means chips can be produced at a lower cost, since more can be crammed onto a single silicon wafer. More advanced process technologies also generally help to improve performance and reduce power consumption. While a planned plant in Dalian that uses a 90-nanometer process technology would lag several generations behind the most advanced technology used by Intel, the plant would still rank among the most sophisticated in the world. Ben Ames in Boston contributed to this report.