By Don Clark
SANTA CLARA, Calif.-- Intel Corp. gave 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, called the
Intel Core M, will be targeted at tablets and other devices that
operate without a cooling fan but are as thin as 9 millimeters or
less.
Rani Borkar, a vice president in Intel's platform engineering
group, said the chip, based on a design called Broadwell, 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 current
versions.
Intel's latest 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.
The company's last 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.
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.
Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com
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