CeBIT 2009: Intel Gives Details on 32nm Technology

At the CeBIT 2009 show in Hanover, Gremany, the world's largest chip maker, Intel, talked about the next-generation 32-nanometer process technology, to which it expects to move this year, and also showcased its upcoming “Clarkdale” and “Arrandale” processors. According to Intel, the first notebook and desktop parts will come before the end of the ongoing year.

The company stated that it had spent a lot of money in developing the new manufacturing process, namely around $8 billion. The investments are aimed at upgrading its facilities in New Mexico, Arizona and Oregon. According to the Santa Clara chip maker, it will use second-generation High-k and Metal Gate transistor technology for the parts manufactured under the new process node.

At the same time, the company also stated that it used the 193nm immersion lithography for critical layers in the chips, while also improving the transistor strain technique so as to leverage the switching capabilities of the transistor. The performance and power efficiency of the chips are expected to be greatly enhanced.

Working desktop and notebook prototypes powered by the upcoming 32nm Clarkdale and Arrandale processors with integrated graphics were also showcased. Christian Morales from Intel stated that the new 32nm node allowed for the leak current of a transistor to be reduced about five times, meaning that there would be significant performance gains over the current 45nm technology.

At CeBIT, the chip maker also said a few words on the next-generation Intel Xeon processor, expected to provide higher data throughput rates, increased performance and enhanced energy efficiency. The research center in Juelich, Germany, is working on a next-generation Intel Xeon processor-based system that should feature 1080 processing nodes and 8640 computing cores.

The company's server and workstation solutions will feature the Nehalem EP quad-core processors, which will include the Hyperthreading technology (8 cores) QPI, while also supporting triple-channel DDR3 memory. At the same time, Intel also said that it planned to launch a six-core/12 thread CPU for servers, which would be dubbed Nehalem EX and would be aimed at large-scale systems with 4 or 8 sockets.