Thinking ahead… what’s after Conroe?

Penryn, also known by Intel’s lithography team as P1266, is a 45nm unified core set for launch in 2007 that is also expected to stay into production into 2008. Intel has already produced SRAM samples for 45nm CPUs, as demonstrated in the lithography shot on the right. Aside from the process shrink on Penryn, the major divergence in design from Conroe is the new material design. With P1266, Intel shifts away from Silicon Dioxide gate dielectrics — a process the company has used since the mid-90s — to High-k dielectrics.

It’s hard to imagine 45nm when Conroe hasn’t been released yet, but even past that we should see 32nm in late 2008. It would be nice to have this much knowledge about upcoming AMD processors :)