Intel To Launch First 32nm Westmere-Class Chips At CES

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It's official -- Intel will launch 17 new desktop and mobile processors based on its 32-nanometer process technology on Jan. 7, 2010 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company confirmed Thursday at a press conference in San Francisco.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant will also release three new chipsets and seven wireless modules on Jan. 7 for a total of 27 new products associated with its next-generation 32nm technology, codenamed Westmere. All of those products are in "volume production," according to Uday Marty, director of notebook marketing at Intel.

"There will not be a long delay from the [Jan. 7] announcement to system availability," he said. Intel has secured 400 designs wins for its first large release of Westmere-class processors, Marty said, though he would not name computer manufacturers who are building Westmere-based desktop and notebook PCs.

Intel's first Westmere-based chips will debut Jan. 7.

The first Westmere products are based on the Nehalem microarchitecture first introduced with the Core i7 line of desktop processors in late 2008 -- an example of Intel's latest process shrink "tick," Westmere, meeting its most recent architecture update "tock," Nehalem, as part of the company's famed "tick-tock" product development cadence for its server and client products.

However, that's not to say that Westmere is only a die shrink. In this new series of processors, Intel has also reduced the number of dies it used in previous Nehalem-generation and Core-generation CPU packages from three to two -- the first being the 32nm processor itself with I/0 and the second featuring a 45nm graphics controller.

Moore's Law in action -- Intel's 32nm process technology on the wafer.

So why isn't Westmere being pitched as a "tock" as well as a "tick"? One is tempted to guess that it's simply because Intel doesn't want to confuse matters and spoil the symmetry of its cadence. But it's also because this microarchitecture change is driven by the new process technology more than anything else -- Intel can squeeze more functionality onto a given silicon die with 32nm transistors than it could at 45nm.

Meanwhile, Intel's Atom family of processors for netbooks, small desktop PCs and handheld devices follows a separate development cadence alongside the tick-tock model. The company is also planning to launch Atom products at CES but is holding those details closer to the vest.

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