Chipzilla says it’s close to ramping 32nm process technology to manufacture the 32nm Westmere version of Nehalem. The company demonstrated a working 32nm Westmere processor for the first time today, smugly noting the firm was well on track with its ‘Tick-Tock’ model.
Usually when Intel shrinks their processors they don’t add any new features to the processor themselves, but this time not only did we get a die shrink but there are new microcode instructions for encryption and decryption slapped on for good measure.
With this move to 32nm Intel is continuing to shrink its transistor size by 50% every two years. Westmere-based processors will push the current Nehalem processors into the mainstream allowing even more affordable high performance processors for everyone.
Nice! I will wait for it to be released!