Intel introduced its new 32-nanometer processor architecture today.
The formal announcement follows one made last month to the press during which Intel laid out its plan for its latest processor family.
Intel said the 32-nanometer processors will fall under the Intel Core family and brings the company’s Nehalem micro architecture into mainstream desktop and notebooks. Intel has invested $7 billion to create four 32nm factories, the company reported.
These processors will fall under Intel i3, i5 and i7 platforms, used in entry-level, mainstream and high-end PCs, respectively.
The new processors’ primary improvements include improved integrated graphics capability, Intel’s Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading technology, and better power management for the processor, said Dr. Zane Ball, Intel’s desktop marketing director.
The new Turbo Boost technology is a system that reallocates the processor’s resources to improve performance. Intel will reveal the exact performance improvement specification at CES.
The improved onboard graphics will allow better game playing and HD video playback, along with faster photo, video and music editing on mainstream computers, Ball said.
Intel’s Karen Regis, consumer client marketing director, said it was important to improve these activities because Intel’s research shows these are the activities most PC owners engage in on a regular basis.
Regis said an Intel poll found that on a weekly basis 39 percent of consumers play a casual PC game, like Facebook’s Farmville, while 27 percent edit photos and 18 percent edit video at least once per week.
Intel also expects to see a healthy recovery of the processor market this year, particularly in the commercial segment. Ball said commercial PC sales suffered terribly during the recession, but predicted these will rebound with commercial units outselling consumer for 2009. Relatively strong consumer sales of notebooks and netbooks had offset the lower commercial sales in 2008.
