CNET posted a story on Intel’s first working chips produced using a 45 nanometre process.  This keeps Moores’ Law on track for the next year, 65 and 90 nanometre were the last greatest processes, and we’ve doubled again over 18 months.  This year they will be able to etch using normal lithography, as opposed to immersion, or other, more complex ways like Extreme Ultraviolet lithography, something that will be needed in the future to continue this shrinkage.

“The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant has created test chips made on the 45-nanometer process and will likely begin shipping processors, flash, and other chips based on that process in the second half of 2007, according to Mark Bohr, director of process architecture and integration at Intel.

The test chips, produced this month, are static SRAM memory chips containing 153 megabits of memory. The chips contain over a billion transistors and are nearly the same size as test SRAM chips produced by Intel in 2000 on the then-new 130-nanometer process that contained 18 megabits of memory. The memory cells on the 45-nanometer test chips take up 0.346 square microns, compared to 2.45 square microns. ”

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