At the Intel Developer’s Forum (IDF) in San Francisco this week, Intel unveiled the industry’s first working chips constructed using 32 nanometer (nm) technology. The new chips sport transistors so tiny that more than 4 million of them could fit on the proverbial head of a pin, according to Intel.
Intel and its rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) currently manufactures chips with 65nm circuitry, and Intel sees its lead in transitioning to smaller circuitry as a key advantage in its battle for market share with AMD, according to Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini.
While Intel’s 32nm chips will not hit the market until 2009, Otellini confirmed at IDF that the company’s 45nm Penryn processors will be available starting in November, and demonstrated the company’s next-generation clip architecture, codenamed “Nehalem,” which is slated for release next year.
Otellini said that releasing new technologies each year is part of Intel’s broader strategy to maintain an edge on its competitors in the microprocessor sector.
“Our tick-tock strategy of alternating next generation silicon technology and a new microprocessor architecture — year after year — is accelerating the pace of innovation in the industry,” Otellini said. “Our customers and computer users around the world can count on Intel’s innovation engine and manufacturing capability to deliver state-of-the-art performance that rapidly becomes mainstream.”
According to Intel, when the Penryn launches in November, it will be the world’s first high-volume 45nm processor, but it won’t be the last; the company plans to introduce 15 new 45nm processors by the end of the year, with another 20 to follow in the first quarter of 2008.
Otellini said that Penryn processors will provide both better performance while consuming less power, providing “up to a 20 percent performance increase while improving energy efficiency.”
“Intel’s breakthrough 45nm silicon process technology allows us to provide low-cost, extremely low-power processors for innovative small form factor devices while delivering high-performance, multicore, multifeatured processors used in the most advanced systems,” Otellini said.
In an interview with the Associated Press, AMD spokesman Gary Silcott said his company is on schedule to deliver its own chips based on 45nm technology in the middle of next year.
In an email sent out by AMD’s public relations department Tuesday, the company took shots at the claims Otellini made in his presentation at IDF, and asserted that Intel’s innovations aren’t so innovative, after all.
“What’s amazing is that many of the ‘groundbreaking, innovative new technologies’ are close facsimiles of technologies AMD pioneered, is already shipping, and in some cases, has been shipping for years,” the email said. “For example, products that are more than a year away, like Nehalem (compare to native Quad-Core AMD Opteron), and QuickPath (compare to AMD Direct Connect Architecture and HyperTransport) are simply Intel’s admission that AMD was right all along about an integrated memory controller being the key to a superior processor architecture.”
