By Don Clark
SANTA CLARA, Calif.-- Intel Corp. provided details of its latest
advance in manufacturing technology, a milestone that arrived after
a delay of more than six months due to technical problems.
The first chip based on the new production process--which is
called the Intel Core M and based on a design called
Broadwell--will be targeted at tablets and other devices that
operate without a cooling fan but are as thin as nine millimeters
or less.
Rani Borkar, a vice president in Intel's platform engineering
group, said the new product will offer seven times the performance
of earlier chips on graphics tasks and twice the speed in
conventional computing tasks. She added that hardware designers
could offer twice the battery life while using batteries that are
half the size of today's versions.
Intel said the first devices based on the new chip will be on
store shelves for the holiday selling season, with more devices
from a range of manufacturers available in the first half of
2015.
The announcement comes as Intel, which has long dominated sales
of chips for personal computers, continues a lengthy struggle to
place its technology into tablets and smartphones. Most makers of
those products use chips from companies that license technology
from ARM Holdings PLC.
Brian Krzanich, Intel's chief executive, has set a target of 40
million tablets using the company's chips this year and has said it
on target to meet that goal.
Technology that helps extend battery life should help, said Bob
O'Donnell, an analyst at Technalysis Research, though the tablet
market may remain tough for the company. The biggest lesson from
the latest technology announcement, he said, is that Intel is
incorporating more advances based on the market's demands rather
than its engineers' goals.
"It's a more pragmatic approach than I think we've seen in a
while," Mr. O'Donnell said.
The new manufacturing process creates chips with circuitry
measured at just 14 nanometers, or billionths of a meter. Smaller
transistors and other features tend to pack more computing
capability into a smaller space, prompting a race by semiconductor
makers to keep shrinking their technology.
Intel's latest production process also is its second to include
what the industry calls FinFETs, a kind of three-dimensional
structure that differs from the conventional design of earlier
transistors. It first appeared in Intel chips using a 22-nanometer
processor that went into volume production in late 2011.
The pace of miniaturization, which has doubled the number of
chips on a typical chip every two years or so, is named after
Intel's co-founder. But Moore's Law, as it is called, has shown
signs of slowing in recent years.
Intel had initially expected to begin churning out the
14-nanometer chips in high volume at the end of 2013, but last fall
said it wouldn't make that schedule because of technical issues it
didn't explain in detail.
Mark Bohr, a senior Intel fellow who helps direct development of
its production process, noted that the initial yield of working
chips on each silicon wafer was worse than Intel achieved in the
early days of producing 22-nanometer chips. But he stressed that
the 14-nanometer process yield is improving rapidly, and has
brought greater benefits than earlier technology shifts.
"Everybody in our industry will acknowledge it is getting
tougher with every new generation," Mr. Bohr said at a briefing for
reporters at Intel's headquarters. But he added: "We are going to
carry the Moore's Law banner as far as we can."
While the initial chips based on the new process will be
targeted at portable devices, Intel executives stressed that the
technology will gradually be introduced in all kinds of products,
including large server systems and desktop PCs.
Intel plans to disclose additional details about the new
technology and products based on it at an annual conference in
September.
Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com
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