14 DAY TRIAL // Intel Developer Forum proved to be quite an interesting venture as the biggest computer hardware manufacturing company in the whole world decided to share with the rest of the human race some of its projects, objectives and future plans. Among those plans there is the fact that Intel will switch again its fabrication process in 2009 and move to a smaller die size by building its processors using the 32 nanometer technology.
While the 32 nanometer technology already exists and Intel president and chief executive officer Paul Otellini presented a 300mm wafer built using that technology, large scale production of central processing units using it will not start before 2009 but then the chips will come with around 1.9 billion electronic components and they will offer a huge performance gain. According to the news site pcworld, Paul Otellini said that the new technology will enable Intel processors to deliver "true to life entertainment and real-life graphics capabilities".
Right now, Intel plans to roll out the Penryn class of processors that will be built using a 45 nanometer fabrication technology and apart from those products, the Silverthorne and Nehalem processors will use the very same technology too, when they will appear next year. The current manufacturing process largely used by Intel is based on 65 nanometer technology and the Penryn class of processors will be the first to go to a smaller scale.
As the 32 nanometer fabrication technology enables larger number of components to be integrated into the same silicon die it is possible to build more powerful chips and the Nehalem family is one of them and apart from the smaller scale they will also integrate a number of new technologies like the QuickPath Interconnect system architecture, integrated memory controller and a number of other features.
Apart from the performance gain, going to a smaller fabrication technology is bound to increase the relative performance per watt and right now Intel is very interested in such gains as it prepares to launch a revamped version of its mobile computing platform, the Santa Rosa. While Intel is the most important processor manufacturer in the whole world, it is not the only company interested in the 32 nanometer process as IBM and some other hardware companies already formed an alliance in order to better explore and develop the 32-nm semiconductor production technology.