Investment, Nanometers and Hafnium 2 - Big, Tiny and Phat

posted by Bill Kircos on February 10, 2009

Warning - biased post here, what else is new. This morning in Washington DC, Intel announced planned US factory investments to the tune of about $7 billion over the next couple of years. The investment will build some of the most state of the art factories in the world that make the chips and brains that run most of your computers.

We also updated our plans for future new chips via a press conference later in the day in San Francisco. Since the design and projected volume of a future chip code-named Westmere (that will be built in these new factories) is trending so well, we may not need to bring certain other planned products to market that are based on 'older' manufacturing technology.

'Older' is the wrong -- and humorous -- term here, however. Today's processors - our flagship Core i7, other Core branded chips, Xeons, Atoms - almost all ship in factories that sketch circuits that are 45 nanometer widths apart, so tiny you can't see them with the naked eye. Using this circuitry, we add hundreds of millions of transistors into our processors that aren't much larger than the size of a US postage stamp. Core i7 is the fastest chip on the planet, and our mobile versions for laptops provide hours and hours of battery life and are the foundation for skinnier, sexier and much lighter laptops.

These (ahem) 'old' chips also include an entirely new formula to build those zillions of transistors called high-k, metal gate. For those element chart gurus, Intel is now mixing in Hafnium with Silicon and other ingredients to build a transistor that leaks less electricity. Fixing those leaks addresses a major power consumption issue when you're cramming hundreds of millions of these 'light bulbs' into a chip and turning them on and off a zillion times each time your processor goes to work for you on your computer.

So what do the 'new' Westmere' chips bring us? Even tinier, more closer together circuitry via 32 nanometer measurements. And a new and improved, second generation high-k formula. What's this mean to all of us who buy computers? Well first, $7 billion future spending in the US is a significant number (unless you compare it to TARP or stimulus packages), and nice shot in the arm as we suffer through very tough economic times.

And, the new manufacturing and design techniques set the table for more powerful processors that require less electricity to run, and thus deliver longer battery life. It also gives us more chip 'real estate' to add or tailor new features inside and around our chips, so that we can bring the Internet and PC-like experience so many are used to on their PCs and laptops to smart phones, netbooks, cars, cash registers, TV set top boxes, DVRs and a host of other devices.

I realize Intel has not been immune to the economic troubles. But I am in awe of what our chip designers and manufacturing experts do every day -- even for Homer Simpson(!). And the company has a deep tradition, or battle cry, to invest during the inevitable downturns. With the speeds our processors run at today, these people are all truly rocket scientists.

 

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tagged: corei7, hafnium, investment, nanometers