Intel's new chips extend Moore's Law, or do they?

Stuart Corner
Monday, 12 November 2007 05:28

Your IT - Home IT

Intel claims that its new 45 nanometre Hafnium-based High-k Metal Gate technology chips "extend Moore's Law" But a speed barrier of 4GHz identified earlier this year has not been broken. The processors are the first to use Intel's Hi-k formula for their hundreds of millions of transistors. They are also the first to be manufactured on the company's 45nm manufacturing process, further boosting performance and lowering power consumption.

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore has called the new technology the biggest transistor advancements in 40 years.  But in June this year,  a New Zealand academic was questioning whether Moore's Law had hit a road block, claiming there had been no significant increase in speeds since 2004 and that speeds beyond 4GHz were unlikely.  He has yet to be proved wrong: Intel's new chips, for all their advances, have a maximum speed of 3.6GHz.

The new 45nm processors boast nearly twice the transistor density of previous chips built on the company's 65nm technology – that is up to 820 million transistors for quad-core processors. Intel says these breakthroughs clear the path for it to design products that are 25 percent smaller than previous versions and, thus, more cost-effective, and that, by next year, it will have the ability to pursue new ultra mobile and consumer electronics 'system on chip' opportunities.

Intel president and CEO, Paul Otellini, said: "The intellects, physics and designs that went into solving one of the industry's most daunting challenges are awe-inspiring and I congratulate the Intel teams for this breakthrough achievement...This feat, coupled with our industry-leading architectures, means faster and sleeker computers, longer battery life and better energy efficiency.
Intel's 45nm Hi-k Xeon processors also deliver an improvement of 38 percent in performance per watt of power consumed over its previous-generation Quad-Core Xeon 5300 Series processors.