Intel Ivy Bridge official: 22nm 3D Tri-Gate to revolutionize processors

Intel has announced its 22nm 3D Tri-Gate transistors, the world’s first on a production technology, and with the potential to create not only smaller chips for smartphones, tablets and other ultraportables, but to make more powerful servers and desktop PCs. The 3D Tri-Gate transistors will be first used in Intel Ivy Bridge processors, demonstrated today and set to be the first high-volume CPUs based on the new technology. Intel isn’t holding back on the hyperbole, saying Ivy Bridge will bring “an unprecedented combination of power savings and performance gains” – up to 37-percent more performance, in fact – and the company even managed to get Gordon E. Moore – who coined “Moore’s Law” – to speak up on how important the 22nm evolution is to tech.

“For years we have seen limits to how small transistors can get. This change in the basic structure is a truly revolutionary approach, and one that should allow Moore’s Law, and the historic pace of innovation, to continue” Gordon E. Moore

Intel’s last significant production scale change took place in 2009, when the company shifted to 32nm processes. That was the second-generation of so-called High k Metal gate transistors, which originally debuted in 2007 with 45nm processes (and surplanted the Strained Silicon technology that had been in use since 2003).

The “3D” in the name isn’t just Intel attempting to cash in on the A/V industry’s latest wheeze. In fact, the 3D Tri-Gate transistors form conducting channels on three sides of a “vertical fin structure”; Intel says this system – which it initially announced back in 2002 – results in less heat being given off, longer battery life for mobile devices, and improved performance thanks to the combination of high-k gate insulators and strained silicon.

“Tri-gate fully-depleted substrate transistors have a raised plateau-like gate structure with two vertical walls and a horizontal wall of gate electrode. This three-dimensional structure improves the drive current while the depleted substrate reduces the leakage current when the transistor is in the “off” state. Reducing leakage current not only helps control heat at the circuit level but also translates to increased battery life in mobile devices” Intel

Intel Ivy Bridge will use similar architecture to the existing Sandy Bridge, the basis of the current 2011 Core processor range. There’s expected to be native USB 3.0 and PCIe 3.0 controllers at the processor level, along with an integrated DirectX graphics core with support for the second-generation of QuickSync, Intel’s media encoding/decoding acceleration technology. The first Ivy Bridge chips are expected to reach high-volume production readiness by the end of this year.

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