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Never mind the torpedoing economy, it's full steam ahead on 32 nanometers for Intel. The chip giant on Tuesday started the day pledging to invest $7 billion on its transition to 32nm process technology and finished it by offering the most visibility to date into its product road map for the first scheduled 32nm processors, code-named Westmere.
"We're investing in America to keep Intel and our nation at the forefront of innovation," said Intel CEO Paul Otellini, appearing in Washington D.C. to detail the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company's plans to invest $7 billion over the next two years to upgrade three factory sites in the U.S. and help "accelerate the Westmere production ramp."
At a separate event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Intel executives shed some light on just how Westmere production is being "accelerated." The chip giant will bring two high-volume 32nm fabs online in 2010 and a pair of planned 45nm processors has been muscled off Intel's road map in favor of 32nm variants.
Havendale and Auburndale -- code-names for late-generation 45nm desktop and mobile processors that had been scheduled for late 2009 or early 2010 production -- have been "deprioritized," according to Stephen Smith, operations director for Intel's Digital Enterprise Group.
Instead, Intel will focus on producing and ramping its first 32nm products, a desktop processor code-named Clarkdale, and a notebook chip called Arrandale, Smith said. Both are dual-core, four-thread parts based on Intel's Nehalem architecture (first seen in the 45nm Core i7 lineup Intel released last November) and are matched with the upcoming Intel 5 Series chipset.
The last of Intel's major 45nm client releases will now apparently be a pair of quad-core, eight-thread processors due out in the second half of 2009 -- Lynnfield for desktops and Clarksfield for notebooks. Those chips, as well as the first two 32nm variants (once again, Clarkdale and Arrandale for those going googly-eyed at all the code names) are platform-compatible, likely welcome news for Intel partners having trouble pitching the expensive platform upgrades necessary for the Core i7.
That means that 45nm Lynnfields and 32nm Clarkdales both drop into the same pair of upcoming desktop platforms -- code-named Piketon (the business-ready vPro board) and Kings Creek (the consumer platform). On the mobile side, both the 45nm Clarksfields and the 32nm Arrandales are attached to the upcoming Calpella platform. All four planned products tap the forthcoming 5 series chipset.
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