14 DAY TRIAL // The advent of the new Penryn series of processors from Intel has pushed the company retire its lower-performing 65-nanometer technology. The "purification" process has started with seven mobile CPUs in the Core 2 Duo family, built on the Merom core.
Intel also announced that it will terminate the T7600, T7400, T7200, T5600 and T5500, as well as their low-voltage counterparts also known as LV7400 and LV7200. The Core 2 Duo chips until July 27. However, Intel has recently informed its vendors that it will also drop some of its dual-core Xeon 3000-series of CPUs.
The first dropped units will be the chips ranging from 1.86GHz to 2.66GHz. The 3040, 3050, 3060 and 3070 processors are all based on the 65-nanometer Conroe core and entered the firm's product discontinuance program, and are due to phasing out. However, the high end models 3075 (2.66 GHz) and 3085 (3.0 GHz) as well as three quad-core Xeon 3200 processors using the older architecture will continue to ship until further announcements. Moreover, the company announced that higher-end Xeons in the 5000-series will remain available.
Intel did not disclose the reason for terminating these processors, but it seems that the company wants to rush the transition towards the new generation of processors, built on the 45-nanometer production node. The chips will be replaced with a dual-core 3GHz Xeon 3100-series processor and three quad-core Xeon 3300 chips running between 2.5GHz and 2.83GHz.
The chip manufacturer has recently introduced the 45-nanometer E3110 chip, running at 3.0 GHz, but it seems to pay extra attention to the 65-nanometer quad-core 3200-series as well as the 45-nanometer 3300 series. The 45-nanometer family will include the 2.5 GHz X3320, 2.66 GHz X3350 and the 2.83 GHz X3360 processors.
Intel did not mention the actual termination date for all its 65-nanometer technology, but it is for sure that the latter will stay alive until late 2008 in Conroe and Celeron chips for desktops and notebooks.