Intel Unveils Industry's First 32-nm Chips

Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini unveiled the industry's first working 32-nm chips, which Intel plans to produce in 2009, at the Intel Developer's Forum in San Francisco today. Intel's 32-nm test chips incorporate logic and memory SRAM (static random access memory) to house more than 1.9 billion transistors. The transistors on the chips are so small that more than 4 million of them can fit in the period at the end of this sentence. The 32-nm process uses the company's second-generation high-k and metal gate transistor technology. Intel will also release the industry's first 45-nm processors — known as the Penryn family — in November. The processor has about 750 design wins so far, according to an Intel release. The company also revealed Intel's next-generation chip architecture codenamed Nehalem, due out next year. The 45-nm Nehalem family will include configurations of up to eight processing cores. It will be the first Intel processor to use the QuickPath Interconnect system architecture, which includes integrated memory controller technology and improved communication links between system components. It will leverage Intel's Core Microarchitecture. "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 in a statement. Intel's "tick-tock" strategy seeks to develop a new chip architecture every other year and a new manufacturing technology in the alternating years.