Tick
Intel's processor roadmap calls for a relentless shrink of the manufacturing process every two years. It went to 45nm late last year and Intel has just announced that it's on track to move to 32nm towards the end of 2009.
This pattern, or cadence, is referred to by Intel as "tick-tock", with the shrink being the tick phase and a new micro architecture, such as Nehalem/Core i7, being the tock phase, which occurs every even year. Intel says that when it produces 32nm chips next year, this would mark the fourth year in a row that this cadence has been adhered to.
The full techie details of all this will be revealed next week at the International Electron Devices meeting in San Francisco. Among the details that will be covered in the consequent white paper will be second generation high-k metal gates and 193nm immersion lithography for critical patterning layers and enhanced transistor strain techniques.
"Our manufacturing prowess and resulting products have helped us widen our lead in computing performance and battery life for Intel-based laptops, servers and desktops," said Mark Bohr, Intel Senior Fellow and director of process architecture and integration. "As we've shown this year, the manufacturing strategy and execution have also given us the ability to create entirely new product lines for MIDs, CE equipment, embedded computers and netbooks."
