Intel Corp. is poised to unveil its latest line of microchips, which are already receiving glowing reviews.
According to the Wall Street Journal’s web site, “The company’s latest chips, being formally announced Monday…were built with new manufacturing materials. Intel is building transistors in the chips out of a material called hafnium instead of silicon dioxide, a mainstay of the industry since the 1960s.”
The senior vice president and general manage of Intel’s mobility group is heralding the advance as one of the largest in 40 years.
The Reuters web site further elaborates on the new chips. "Known by the project name Penryn, the chips hold little in the way of fundamental design advances but are an important step in continuing the industry's track record of delivering chips that get smaller and faster every two years or so… Penryn is the 'tick' in Intel's 'tick-tock' strategy of shrinking an existing chip design to a smaller size, then following up the next year with an all-new blueprint, known as a microarchitecture.”
With these chips, Intel looks to decrease chip size while increasing its speed. They will be sold under Intel’s Xeon and Core 2 brands and will be able to run software up to 15 percent faster.
The Reuters web site also talked about what this will mean for the future of the company. “It cements Intel's manufacturing lead over rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.N: Quote, Profile, Research), which only started making chips on 65 nanometers earlier this year but plans to try to roll out 45 nanometer technology in 2008.”
I have always put together my own computers and have never used Intel products. Not because they are bad or unreliable. But because, like Apple, they were so proprietary and expensive that I could only afford AMD. And they required expensive accessories, like "Rambus" technology. I expect that trend will continue also. AMD will continue to trail Intel but it will also bring out products that are considerably cheaper and just as fast using off-the-shelf technology that people like myself can afford.
The computer industry is plenty big enough for both companies. There are tasks that will use and accomodate a wide range of chips and chip sets, all the way from computers to toys, general computing to dedicated tasks.
The press loves to talk in terms of competition or races, when markets are often more complex than that simple paradigm. It is not necessarily a zero sum game.
The server chips will sell for $177 to $1279 in quantities of 1,000. The gaming chip will cost $999 in quantities of 1,000. Intel said all the processors would be available within 45 days.
More reason to wait for AMD to catch up. Or, wait for the prices to go down. I'm into gaming machines but I'm not gonna spend $900.00 on the CPU chip! Especially when memory speeds will take time to catch up to it anyway!
