“This is the first time since the late 1960s these basic materials were changed,” says Kaizad Mistry, Intel’s 45nm technology development manager. “This revolutionary change allowed us to increase performance by 20 percent and reduce leakage by five to 10 times, which is imperative to the future of Moore’s Law, a high-tech industry axiom that transistor counts double about every two years, and the economics of the information age.”

Intel’s 45nm family of products called Penryn is the next step in the chipmaker’s delivery of new processor technology and new microachitecture every other year. Penryn uses hundreds of millions of these microscopic transistors or switches inside the next generation Intel Core(R) 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad and Xeon multi-core processors. With more than 400 million transistors for dual-core processors and more than 800 million for quad-core, the Penryn family of 45nm processors offer greater performance and power management capabilities, as well as higher core speeds and caches. Currently, Intel has more than 15 products based on 45nm in development across desktop, mobile, workstation and enterprise segments.

The price of a transistor in Intel’s next-generation Penryn processors is about one-millionth the average price of a transistor in 1968. If car prices fell at that rate, a new car today would cost about one cent.

Intel plans to manufacture chips using the 45nm process technology at the $3 billion Fab 32 manufacturing plant under construction on the Octillo campus in south Chandler. When Fab 32 opens in the second half of 2007, it will be Intel’s sixth 300mm wafer facility and their first 45nm manufacturing plant. The new facility will be about one million square feet with 184,000 square feet of clean room space. Chips are fabricated in clean rooms that are 10,000 times cleaner than hospital operating rooms.

“Intel adds 10,000 very high paying jobs to Chandler, and over the last 28 years has provided the city a significant amount of business attraction,” says Christine Mackay, economic development specialist in the industrial office with the city of Chandler. “We believe strongly in Intel and work closely with them to provide what they need as a business partner.”

“Chandler is a great place to live and work and the credit belongs to Intel,” she adds. “It wouldn’t be what it is today if Intel had chosen not to locate here back in 1979.”

Today Chandler has an estimated population of almost 250,000 people. Approximately 65 percent is 39 years or younger and the median income is just over $72,000. For the city to continue being an attractive destination, Tom Franz, vice president and general manager of fab/sort manufacturing for Intel, says Chandler must work with the legislature to encourage tax reform that promotes a strong business climate. He also believes the city must place a high priority on developing world-class talent.

“I don’t see any other real challenges for Intel in Arizona over the next several years, except having to work extra hard in this competitive marketplace to find the right people with the right skill sets,” he says.

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