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IDF Fall 09: 22nm and the Atom App Store

By Dr. Jimmy Tang - 23 Sep 2009

Intel Announces First Working 22nm Chips

Intel Announces First Working 22nm Chips

Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini kicked off the Intel Developer Forum today with the company's vision of the computing future centred on technologies built in their chips. Detailing how Intel kept Moore's Law alive with its current 45nm products, Otellini said that the company has already begun production of the world's first 32nm microprocessor codenamed Westmere.

The upcoming Westmere processor will be the first high-performance processor to integrate graphics with the CPU. Besides markedly improved performance, the processor will also support the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) instructions for faster encryption and decryption. Westmere is currently on track to ship in the fourth quarter of this year.

Moving forward and following their tick-tock model, Intel will introduce the next generation process technology at 22nm in about 2 years after the debut of its 32nm product. Displaying for the first time their latest 22nm wafer which contains 364Mbit SRAM memory test chips and more than 2.9 billion transistors, Intel is confident that its next generation technology is on track to keep Moore's Law going for another couple of years.

Paul Otellini shows off Intel's first 22nm silicon.

Intel also disclosed that its next generation 22nm chips will feature its third generation high-k + metal gate transistors for improved performance and reduced leakage power. Although these upcoming chips are at a new technology node, Intel said that it will continue to reuse most of its current equipment, making this technology transition a lot less capital intensive.

The world's first 22nm SRAM test structure. The chip contains four different test 'cores' and I/O and mixed signal test circuits. For the first time also, Intel created two different 22nm transistors. One which is at 0.092-sq microns for high density circuits while a slightly larger 0.108-sq micron cell would be used for low voltage circuits.

Beyond 22nm, Intel predicted its tick-tock model to continue further into the 15nm region in 2013 and likely below 15nm in 2015 and beyond. However, Intel will not only depend on direct feature shrink but would instead introduce new technologies to further enhance the performance of their chips. Technologies such as carbon nanotube FETs, 3-D transistors, optical interconnects, III-V compound semiconductor and nanowires are some of the other options that Intel is currently evaluating.

Moore's Law will be extended until after 2011 with the 22nm breakthrough.

 

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