Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini announced today that Intel will spend $7 billion over the next two years to build advanced manufacturing facilities in the United States for deployment of their 32 nanometer (nm) manufacturing technology that will be used to build faster, smaller chips that consume less energy.
The next-generation 32-nanometer chip process is scheduled to make an appearance in late-2009. The announcement comes as a surprise to many who believed that the new process would not be released until 2010. The news also comes amid increasing competition from competitor AMD with their fairly new 45-nm chips that have performed extremely well in recent benchmarks.
Intel will roll out a 32-nanometer mobile processor code-named “Arrandale” in Q4 of this year that features integrated graphics on the same chip package as the main CPU. This would be a first for Intel which has never offered graphics on the same chip package. The new integrated graphics CPUs will be targeted towards mobile computing recognizing the importance of having powerful, multi-core, multi-threaded laptops in todays on-the-go world.
“We’re investing in America to keep Intel and our nation at the forefront of innovation,” Otellini said. “These manufacturing facilities will produce the most advanced computing technology in the world. The capabilities of our 32nm factories are truly extraordinary, and the chips they produce will become the basic building blocks of the digital world, generating economic returns far beyond our industry.”
Intel will only produce two 32-nm processors in 2009 known as “Clarkdale” and “Arrandale”. The chips will be two-core, four-threaded processors with inegrated graphics, according to Stephen Smith, vice president and director of group operations for Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group.
In the ever-growing focus on multi-core, multi-thread and hyper-threaded chips, Intel stated that clock speeds will remain the same as found in todays processors. Having the ability to handle multiple-tasks and handle multiple-processes instead of handling one task really fast increases the overall productivity and performance of today’s systems. Intel also demonstrated the new “Arrandale” chip running CineBench and the popular game, “Red Alert 3.”
