Penryn Core 2 Duo Discussion

Our friends over at Lost Circuits have an article on-line this morning with their thoughts regarding Intel's upcoming 45nm Penryn core and 45nm high-k and metal gate fabrication process.

"On January 26, 2007, Intel went public with the demonstration of their first processor core - code name Penryn - manufactured on a 45 nm dry lithography and running several operating systems at roughly over 2 GHz core speed. The manufacturing process - P1266 - has been working since January 2006 for the manufacture of the highest density SRAM cell array in the industry and is based on bringing back metal gates into the transistors while replacing the (SiO2) insulator with a precision-manufactured hafnium alloy High-k substrate using ALD technology. The 45nm process-technology promises to put an end to leakage current runaway and allows the placing of roughly twice as many transistors per area compared to the hitherto used 65 nm (1264) process. Yield analysis is good at this point and the A0 silicon running is no small accomplishment. What else has Intel in stock for the next few months? And what are IBM / AMD saying to all of this?"

Our take on Penryn and 45nm is available right here.