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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer who wrote (154000)	1/6/2002 12:32:00 PM
From: Joseph Pareti	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Intel P4 Gets Faster, Smaller with Manufacturing Upgrade Source: Computergram International Date: January 7, 2002 Number: 4326 By Dan Jones Intel Corp will launch smaller, faster Pentium 4 microprocessors today (Monday), using an upgraded 0.13 micron process manufacturing process. The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker told ComputerWire on Friday that will ramp up its P4 manufacturing process again in the first half of 2002, by starting to produce semiconductors culled from 12 inch wafers instead of the more traditional 8 inch variety. All these manufacturing tweaks are done in the name of improving the speed and the size of the chips, to help Intel in its efforts to pull ahead of rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. The company will release 2.2GHz and 2GHz P4 chips. All the major desktop OEMs will launch machines using the semiconductors, according to Intel spokesperson, George Alfs. "We've been shipping for a about a month now," he said. The new 0.13 micron Pentium 4, which was codenamed Northwood, has 55 million transistors squeezed onto the chip, compared to the 42 million on the older 0.18 micron process version. Nevertheless, because of the smaller manufacturing process, Intel can reduce the chip die size from 217mm squared to 146mm squared. Intel will have two fabrication plants producing Pentium 4 chips using the 12 inch wafers in the first half of this year. The benefit of moving to the larger size is that Intel can produce up to 25% more chips per wafer, Alfs said. On the technical side, the new Pentiums have an increased level two memory cache, up from 256KB to 512KB. "When you start getting to these 2GHz clock speeds, you need to a lot of memory close to the processor," Alfs said. Intel expects to hit 3GHz clock speeds by the end of this year. The current chips are at least 10% faster than their immediate predecessors are, Alfs said. Meanwhile, AMD is reportedly planning to launch a 1.67GHz AMD XP 2000+ today. This will be the fastest desktop processor the company offers. dan.jones@computerwire.com