45 nm process
 

I keep hearing about a "45 nm Intel chip". We (Center for Nanotechnology) haven't seen anything under 60 nm for anything but memory (30 nm) where you can take advantage of the repetitive nature of the lithography. Anyone have any real news on the 45 nm process?

All that I've heard is that intel is working on a 45 nm process, and that a 45 nm chip is in the pipeline. To the best of my knowledge, Intel's desktop CPUs are still made using a 90 nm process, and that a 60 nm process will be introduced soon. I don't know about thier mobile proccesors.... they might already be on a 60 nm process.

45nm process is being refined by Intel right now. Not expected to see CPU's with it untill 2007.

http://www.overclockers.com/tips00825/

AMD's fab36 in germany is being designed for 65, 45, and 30nm processes, so I take it AMD is working towards smaller processes as well, but, as fab36 won't be complete until 2006 (i think), we probably won't see 45nm until 2007 at the earliest.
Right now at IDF, intel is showing off some new 65nm ES processors (saw pics of a pentium D, Yonah over at anandtech)

From what I have heard the big thing with intels shrink to 45 is they have solved the leakage issues which started to appear at the 90 shrink and should run much cooler. That would seem to make the shrink to 45 as the most important advance in a long time.

Nobody is manufacturing at 45 right now, except for those products you mentionned.

The last transition to 90 was a bit rough, and 60 has its own set of complexities (but well on its way for this year by Intel, and early next year by AMD).

45nm has a new twisted limitation (among others): the copper interconnects are too resistive.

Intel have apparently got one 30nm capable machine right now that they're playing with, and the fab manufacturers are apparently starting to ramp up production of 30nm fabs. The technical complexity in the vacuum systems and cleanliness alone is pretty fierce however, and there are some fairly substantial operating problems in practice (e.g. current designs get through lots of some very expensive gases).

(I work for a company that deals in vacuum kit, and this information comes from someone at work who works on the vacuum technology behind this new generation of fabs - judge for yourself it's reliability though).

30 and 45 nm production is still a long way off. The next transistion is to 65nm, which is well underway at the moment, with the first chips due out in January.