Intel launches 45nm Penryn chips

I prsnlly didnt believe youtube videos given their size can acutally be hi-def quality only if the processor could handle more compression (prnlly thought the algo didnt get any better than current ones), but anyway this quote indicated otherwise in NY times --

Intel plans to announce a family of microprocessor chips on Monday that it says will speed the availability of high-definition video via the Internet. Sean Maloney, Intel’s chief sales and marketing officer, said last week that the chips’ increased computing power would begin the transformation of today’s stuttering and blurry videos, the staple of YouTube and other video streaming sites, into high-resolution, full-screen quality that will begin to compete with the living room HDTV. “It’s biggest impact is high-definition video,” he said. “It will be highly addictive.” Intel’s new family, made up of 16 processors, would first be used in servers and high-end desktops that compress the video. They are the first chips based on a new manufacturing process that Intel says will give it a significant competitive advantage by increasing computing performance while reducing power consumption.

The chips, which were developed under the code name Penryn, use a re-engineered transistor that is about half the size of its predecessor. It switches more quickly, reqube ires less switching power and leaks less current than that previous transistor. The Penryn chips are at the next stage of refinement, just 45 nanometers. The company said it would be able to squeeze up to 820 million transistors onto a single silicon die. The company is making the chips at two factories, in Oregon and Arizona. Next year, it will add two plants, in Israel and New Mexico. The first products based on the new manufacturing technology will be Intel Core 2 and Xeon microprocessors. Chips for notebook PCs, marketed as the Intel Core 2 Extreme and Intel Core 2 Duo, will available in the first quarter of next year. Is this the end of AMD? Unless they introduce a really revolutionary processor, their days may be slowly over…

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12intel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin