San Francisco (CA) – This year’s IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) will offer once again hundreds of briefing sessions on the latest developments in the semiconductor industry. Among the most interesting in the microprocessor category are sessions about a 45 nm Cell processor, Intel’s quad-core Itanium Tukwila and entry-level Silverthorne CPUs as well as Sun’s 16-core Niagara 3 chip.
Information provided through the ISSCC 2008 program are brief, but the document - which was posted earlier this month on the ISSCC website – offers some insight what we can expect to learn this year. Sony is apparently working on a 65 nm to 45 nm migration of its Cell Broadband Engine. Sony claims that the chip area size will be reduced by 34% and the 45 nm Cell will consume 40% less power than the 65 nm generation. The company also works on improving the design for manufacturability (DFM) for Cell to simplify the CPU production process.
Link: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/45nm-Cell-BE,news-27328.html
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