Chipmaker pulls away from AMD.
Intel has shown off the first silicon produced by its upcoming 32nm processing technology.
Chief executive Paul Otellini displayed a test wafer featuring SRAM memory during his opening keynote at the Intel Developer Forum. He touted that each of the dies featured 1.9bn transistors.
SRAM is commonly used to test new processing technologies and transistor densities typically don't reflect those in working processors. The chipmaker is scheduled to ship 45nm processors by 2009.
Otellini also revealed that its upcoming 45nm Penryn processor will start shipping on 12 November. A single Penryn die features 410m transistors.
Intel will launch 20 processors in November, and another 20 in the first quarter of 2007. Otellini boasted that more then 750 systems will feature the processor when it launches.
Rival chipmaker AMD, by comparison, started shipping its first 65nm chips earlier this month when it launched its 'Barcelona' Opteron processor. Although several system builders have committed to building systems with the new chip, none of those are currently shipping.
The Penryn launch will be followed by the Nehalem micro-architecture launch next year. The chip will feature eight cores with two threads each on a single die. Intel previously hadn’t said if the chip would feature a monolithic design or if it would bundle two quad core processors on a singe processor, similar to the design for its current quad core processors. The monolithic design is faster and offers better power efficiency, but is more difficult to manufacture.
Intel also unveiled its Quickpath Interconnect technology that will be used in Nehalem. The technology replaces the front side bus for Itanium and Xeon processors and allows for third party application accelerators that plug in directly into the processor.
Intel had previously said that Nehalem will feature an optional integrated graphics processor. The chipmaker also will offer a vast number of different models, allowing transistors to be used for either processor cores or additional cache memory.
Intel's announcements yielded few surprises, which appeared to be the exact message that Intel wanted to transmit.
In his keynote, Otellini emphasised the need for the technology industry to create new products, arguing that today's niche products will reach a mass audience by tomorrow.
"It's our job as an industry to drive technology from its inception into widespread adoption," Otellini said.
In essence, Intel demonstrated that things are back on track, argued Gordon Haff, a principal IT advisor with analyst firm Illuminata.
"Intel is saying: 'We're doing what we said we would do year ago.' Not really much has changed," Haff said.