Intel launches first 14-nanometre processor for thin fanless PCs
By Leo Kelio
Intel has launched a generation of processors with the smallest transistors ever featured in a commercial product.
The Core M chip is the first in the family of Intel's next-generation Broadwell processors.
Intel had initially aimed to start delivering them to computer makers last year.
However, problems manufacturing the 14-nanometre transistors meant that the first chips were not sent until July.
The tech offers improved computing power and better battery life, according to Intel.
The firm has managed to make the physical size of the Core M 50% smaller and 30% thinner than that of the equivalent last-generation Haswell chip, which featured 22-nanometre (meaning billionths of a metre) transistors.
The firm said manufacturers would now be able to produce "razor-thin" fanless tablets - less than 9mm (0.35in) thick - without having to opt for a less powerful option, such as a rival ARM-based processor.
To coincide with Intel's launch at Berlin's IFA tech conference, several firms - including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo - unveiled laptop-tablet hybrids featuring the new processor.
The Core M is intended to be the most basic version of Broadwell. More powerful releases destined for desktop PCs and high-end laptops should become available early next year.
Experts said some manufacturers have had to delay product launches as a consequence.
But they added that Intel should not have lost business, because it still had a significant lead over its PC chip rival AMD when it came to CPU (central processing unit) development.
"Intel has a year-and-a-half to a two-year advantage over AMD in processing technology based on announced products," said Sergis Mushell, research director at the tech consultancy Gartner.
"Fourteen nanometre is not an easy thing to achieve - it's an industry first - so it's not the case that Intel is falling behind the rest of the industry.
"But where the delay is meaningful is the added time to deliver two-in-one fanless devices, which would have been very competitive with the [ARM-based] tablets that impacted sales of PCs."
Intel said it had been a "business decision" to produce the Core M chips first.
Tick time
According to the company, users should experience 50% faster computing performance and 40% faster graphics performance with Core M than a comparable last-generation chip.
However, applications may not see a matching speed increase because of the limitations of other components.
Intel said its tests indicated that a system that used to manage six hours and 20 minutes of video playback before running out of battery now lasted for more than eight hours.
Broadwell represents the "tick" in Intel's "tick-tock" development model, meaning that the major change is the shrinking of the processor's transistors rather than an overhaul of its architecture, as was the case with Haswell.
Transistors are a kind of switch that turns on and off as quickly as possible to let a computer carry out its calculations.
According to Moore's Law - an observation by one of Intel's co-founders - the number of transistors that can be placed on a chip for the same cost doubles roughly every two years.
The company acknowledged that it was becoming more difficult to hit the target.
"Moore's Law is incredibly challenging," said Kirk Skaugen, Intel's general manager of personal computing.
"Putting billions of transistors on nanometres of silicon is not something anyone has ever done before.
"It has got harder every generation over the last decade or few... and I expect it to continue to be very difficult, but we are confident as we look forward."
He added that one of Intel's key advantages was that it was the first and only company to shift over to "3D" or tri-gate technology, which had helped it shrink the transistors' size.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29066210
