Intel Corporation said a new line of computer processors due out later this year will greatly speed up running computer games, videos and other heavy workloads. The world"s biggest microchip maker, which powers about 75% of computers, said the new Penryn processors will have the same basic design as current ones, but the circuitry will be 30% thinner — just 45 millionths of a millimetre wide. The Penryn would be the world"s first 45 nanometer processor, said Patrick Gelsinger, the general manager for Intel"s digital enterprise group. The new processors will hit the market later this year, but Gelsinger did not provide a timeline.
"In high-performance computing and bandwidth intensive applications ... there will be up to a whopping 45 percent performance increase," which in a prototype Penryn chip with four processing cores translated into 40% faster performance in computer games and video processing, while more mundane tasks such as image processing ran about 15% faster, Gelsinger said. The successor to Penryn, a family of chips known as Nehalem, will make their debut in 2008 with an overhauled design and featuring up to eight processing cores. Intel also reiterated plans to build graphics capabilities into Nehalem processors, a sign that it is mounting a challenge to Advanced Micro Devices Incorporated"s Fusion project, scheduled to come out in early 2009.