Panasonic begins production of world's first 45nm circuits

While some vendors are out there blowharding their 45nm processes, Panasonic is actually doing something about it. Today, Panasonic started mass production of the world's first 45nm system LSIs. More specifically, they've started manufacturing a 45nm-based UniPhier (Universal Platform for High-quality Image Enhancing Revolution) at their new semicoductor factory in Uozu, Japan. In other words, we're due to see more powerful A/V gear from Panny capable of processing a pair of 1080p displays in parallel, H.264 encoding, symmetric multi-processing, and high-performance 3D graphics from circuitry consuming about half the power and surface area of traditional 65nm-based processes. Really, what's not to love?

[Paul @ Jun 19th 2007 7:35AM]

To put this into perspective, the lines that interconnect the (already microscopic) devices in these chips are so narrow that you could get around 400 of them in the width of a human hair. Even as an ex-semiconductor man, I find the scale of these devices astonishing...

[Paul @ Jun 19th 2007 7:37AM]

Sorry, I should have said 'components' in my previous post, not 'devices'

[C_Wiz @ Jun 19th 2007 11:50AM]

World's First 45nm circuits ? Intel has taped out it's 45nm Penryn back in January (see here : http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5657 for example). Last april, during the Intel Developper Forum in Beijing, Intel even allowed some press to run some (selected) benchmarks on 45nm Penryn.

I'm sorry but the title of this news could not be more misleading.

[sdsdv10 @ Jun 19th 2007 8:18PM]

C_Wiz the key word here is "production". The Intel stuff was test runs, this is full scale mass product. Same idea, different amount. In plain english, "lots" versus "a little".