Getting a look at Intel’s new 45nm fab

Here’s Intel’s Senior Fellow, Mark Bohr, showing me around the new Intel 45 nm fab up near Portland, Oregon.

Some parts of this are boring (he takes me into the part of the fab where workers put on their “bunny suits”) but others are real interesting, including a discussion of the technology behind how they shrunk transistors to 45nm.

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And here’s Kelin Kuhn, who is the 45 nanometer device group manager. She runs the test lab where they figure out how to improve yields. That’s very important to Intel’s business. A little-known fact is that not every processor on a wafer is useable. The higher the percentage of usable processors, the more profitable Intel will be. It’s Kelin’s job to increase that yield. She’s a real impressive person and hope you enjoy meeting her as much as I did.

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Of course, what does this all mean? By the end of 2007 companies like Apple and Dell will be able to bring out computers that are faster, use less power, and are cheaper to produce.

Congrats to the Intel team for getting 45nm done. It’s an impressive technical achievement and one that most of us don’t really appreciate when turning on our machines.

Here’s John Markoff’s article about the new Intel announcements in the New York Times.

UPDATE: PodTech produced a more professional video about these announcements.