Intel says new 32nm architecture coming early

Intel chief Paul Otellini revealed during the company's fiscal results call that its new Sandy Bridge architecture would arrive early. Owing to the "very strong reception" of the 32 nanometer processor design, Intel will speed up the production scaling at its factories to meet demand. The CEO expected chips to arrive late this year, though whether the initial release had been moved up wasn't said during the call.

Full details of what Sandy Bridge will involve still haven't been disclosed, although Intel has already said the first redesign since 2008's Nehalem will have some optimizations and bring Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX), a new set of code to speed up tasks like video encoding as well as certain general math. Recent rumors have alluded to low-power desktop chips being possible as well as moving the graphics on to the chip die itself, not just the package as on existing processors.

The first processors based on Sandy Bridge will all be desktop processors and could start at 3.1GHz and above. Notebook equivalents won't show until the Huron River platform ships early next year.

By Electronista Staff