Intel demonstrates first working 32nm chip

Author: Tim Smalley
Published: 18th September 2007
Comments (9) Stumble
Otellini shows off the world's first fully functional 32nm microchip.

Otellini shows off the world's first fully functional 32nm microchip.

During this morning's opening keynote, Intel CEO Paul Otellini revealed that the company's 32nm process is on track to begin production in 2009.

The company's next generation 32nm process uses second-generation high-k metal gate transistor technology, which will be an evolution of the current 45nm transistor design.

Otellini showed off the world's first fully functional microchips built using 32nm technology in the form of a 300mm wafer of 291Mbit SRAM chips. Although these didn't have any execution cores, it is nevertheless impressive to see 32nm already working.

What's more impressive though is the fact that each of these SRAM chips had over 1.9 billion transistors inside.

Otellini said that Intel will continue to execute its tick-tock strategy, meaning that the first processors to use this new technology will be an evolution of the Nehalem architecture.

Discuss in the forums
Quote The_Pope 18th September 2007, 19:14
Glad to see Tim's putting my Canon 70-300 IS to good use - that's a nice shot :D Would love to know how many SRAMs per wafer - I want to calculate "billions of transistors per wafer" cos I'm sad like that
Quote Clocked 18th September 2007, 19:16
Wow 32nm Already? Made me wonder when we are going to hit the limit for how small we can make em - will they eventually be built at the molecular level by nanobots?
Quote The_Pope 18th September 2007, 20:07
I think I'm right in remembering the practical limit being close to 12nm or something like that. Next we move to optical - check this out: http://www.trustedreviews.com/cpu-memory/news/2007/09/18/Silicon-Photonics-The-Next-Step/p1
Quote Kipman725 18th September 2007, 20:56
they must be so hard to design.. practicaly need a degree in quantum physics aswell as electronic engineering :| very high frequancy circuits are hard enough without the traces only nm apart and far thiner than a human hair. How long can we keep up this reduction in size?
Quote p3n 18th September 2007, 21:21
Pretty sure 45nm was 'impossible' a few years ago, its more chemical advances that allow these shrinking cores
Quote yakyb 18th September 2007, 22:33
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=158320&page=9

go congratulate Fugger on his acheivement
Quote E.E.L. Ambiense 19th September 2007, 14:38
One rare instance where something shrinking is good! :D
Quote completemadness 19th September 2007, 19:27
Quote:
Otellini shows off the world's first fully functional 32nm microchip.
Probably not very functional when hes had his grubby hands all over it
Quote The_Beast 19th September 2007, 23:05
The smallest we could ever make cpus would be 3 atoms big (haha big)

that is if we could even do that
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