San Francisco, Nov 25: Intel, the world's largest maker of semiconductors, on Monday said it has built test chips using next-generation 65 nanometer technology and expects to be the first to produce them, in 2005. The demonstration chips compared to 90 nanometer chips slated to be shipping in volume early next year and 130 nanometer chips that are currently in wide use. One nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.

The smaller the circuitry the more transistors can be packed into a chip for more functionality and better performance.
The 65 nanometer process will enable Intel to double the number of transistors it can put on a single chip from Tuesday’s chips, the company said.
The transistors on the static random access memory (SRAM) test chips are so small that 10 million of them would fit in one square millimeter, roughly the size of the top of a ball point pen, according to the Santa Clara, California-based company.
Bureau Report