Intel unveils its new smaller microchips

Intel is to unveil its latest line of microchips today, 12 November. The company''s latest chips, which are already receiving glowing reviews, are built with new manufacturing materials. The transistors in the chips are made from a material called hafnium rather than the traditional silicon dioxide, used since the ''60s.

Intel says it is one of the most significant advances in the industry over the last 40 years. Made under the project name Penryn, the chips do not have fundamental design advances, but make major strides towards delivering chips that get smaller and faster every two years or so.

Penryn is the ''tick'' in what Intel calls its ''tick-tock'' strategy of shrinking an existing chip design to a smaller size, and then following up with an all-new blueprint, known as a microarchitecture. Faster and smaller, the new chips will be sold under Intel''s Xeon and Core 2 brands, and will be able to run software up to 15 per cent faster.

With this launch, Intel is trying to extend its manufacturing lead over rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which started making chips on 65 nanometres wafers only earlier this year, and plans to try and roll out 45 nanometre technology in 2008.