Intel CEO Paul Otellini to Demonstrate Advances in High-Def and 3-D Content at 2010 CES

At the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show at Las Vegas Convention Center, Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini will talk about predictions he made in his 2008 CES keynote, such as more powerful and personal computing devices, anytime/anywhere Internet connectivity, new user interfaces and richer, more immersive content. He'll also demonstrate how these trends are leading to amazing advances in high-def and 3-D content, smarter phones and TVs and other connected devices and machines that you normally don't associate with computers. On January 7, 2010, Intel Will Introduce New Intel® Core™ Processors, bringing the Nehalem micro-architecture to the mainstream for desktop and laptop PCs.

A major news event at CES will be Intel Corporation's introduction of its upcoming Intel® Core™ processor family for laptop and desktop buyers, delivering such unique features as Intel® Turbo Boost Technology to the mainstream markets. Intel Corporation highlights include a "32-nanometer-minute" press conference where Intel will "exercise its Core™.

Intel is advancing 32 nanometer technology which will supplant current 65 nanometer technology used in central processing units and computer memory chips.  During the 2009 downturn, Intel invested $7B in US alone for four 32 nm factories.

Intel presents the following "fun facts" about 32 nanometer technology. 

The original transistor built by Bell Labs in 1947 was large enough that it was pieced together by hand. By contrast, more than 60 million 32nm transistors could fit onto the head of a pin. A pin head is about 1.5 mm in diameter.

More than 4 million 32nm transistors could fit in the period at the end of this sentence. A period is estimated to be 1/10 square millimeter in area.

A 32nm transistor contains gates that are so small, you could fit 3,000 of them across the width of a human hair. A human hair is about 90 microns in diameter; a 32nm transistor gate is about 30nm long.

If a typical house shrunk as transistors have, you would not be able to see a house without a microscope. To see a 32nm feature with the naked eye, you would have to enlarge a chip to be larger than a house. The smallest feature visible to the naked eye is 40 microns.

Compared to Intel’s first microprocessor, the 4004, introduced in 1971, a 32nm CPU runs over 4000 times as fast and each transistor uses about 4000 times less energy. The price per transistor has dropped by a factor of about 100,000.

A 32nm transistor can switch on and off over 300 billion times in one second. It would take you 4000 years to flick a light switch on and off that many times. Assumes a person can flick a light switch on and off 150 times per minute.

Intel has shipped over 200 million CPUs using high-k/metal-gate transistors – the kind used in 32nm processors -- since the technology was first put into production in November 2007. This translates to over 50,000,000,000,000,000 (50 quadrillion) transistors, or the equivalent of over 7 million transistors for every man, woman and child on earth.