1Ivy Bridge
2Ivy Bridge Wafer
Intel executives expect the Ivy Bridge ramp to be the fastest in company history. Intel has outfitted three manufacturing fabs to build the chips, and the company is building a fourth one that will go online later this year. There will be 50 percent more supply than what Intel had early in the product cycle for Sandy Bridge, and company officials expect Ivy Bridge to account for half of all chip shipments by the fall.
3Tri-Gate Transistors
The Tri-Gate transistor architecture, which Intel engineers had been working on for 10 years before it was announced in 2011, will drive down the power consumption of the processor and give Intel a key technology as it looks to gain traction in the smartphone and tablet markets dominated by chips designed by ARM and made by the likes of Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics and Texas Instruments.
4Tri-Gate Architecture
The Tri-Gate architecture essentially moves away from the flat “planar” circuitry of previous designs to a three-dimensional structure that enables Intel to offer better performance and power efficiency. This illustration compares the 32nm transistor on the left with the 22nm Tri-Gate architecture. The planar transistor in the current (represented by the yellow dots) flows in a plane underneath the gate. In a Tri-Gate transistor, the current flows on three sides of a vertical fin.
5HP Bodie 27 All-in-One
6Lenovo A720 All-in-One
7Asus All-in-One ET27 Series
8Asus N65 Laptop
9CyberPowerPC
10MSI GT70 Laptop
MSI’s GT70 laptop also will be powered by upcoming Ivy Bridge processors.