The "new Hafnium chip" is not that new. I thought Intel started "shrinking" microprocessors to 45 nano about 2 years ago, after several years of research?
Here is what Intel says:
The fundamental building blocks for all computer chips—transistors—have tracked with Moore's Law for forty years. Intel has led the industry in transistor gate dielectric scaling using silicon dioxide (SiO2) for seven logic-process generations over the last 15 years. But as transistors shrink, leakage current can increase. Managing that leakage is crucial for reliable high-speed operation, and is becoming an increasingly important factor in chip design. Intel has made a significant breakthrough in solving the chip power problem, identifying a new "high-k" (Hi-k) material called hafnium to replace the transistor's silicon dioxide gate dielectric, and new metals to replace the polysilicon gate electrode of NMOS and PMOS transistors. These new materials, along with the right process recipe, reduce gate leakage more than 100-fold, while delivering record transistor performance.
"High-k" stands for high dielectric constant, a measure of how much charge a material can hold.
The dielectric constant also relates directly to transistor performance. The higher "k" increases the transistor capacitance so that the transistor can switch properly between and "on" and "off" (WMV 9.5MB) states, with very low current when off yet very high current when on.
The entire semiconductor industry is struggling with the heat of chips, which increases exponentially as the number of transistors increase. Leakage control via new high-k materials is one of many steps toward making transistors run cooler.
Intel® 45nm high-k metal gate silicon technology is the next-generation Intel® Core™ microarchitecture. With roughly twice the density of Intel® 65nm technology, Intel's 45nm packs about double the number of transistors into the same silicon space. That's more than 400 million transistors for dual-core processors and more than 800 million for quad-core. Intel's 45nm technology enables great performance leaps, up to 50-percent larger L2 cache, and new levels of breakthrough energy efficiency.
The mightiest top of the line Intel processor is Core 2 Extreme (775):
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 Processor EU80569XL088NL - 3.20GHz, 12MB Cache, 1600MHz FSB, Yorkfield XE, Quad Core, OEM, Socket 775
Price? $1499.99 (after rebate
)