Today, Texas Instrument has made a startling announcement that it will exceed Intel in terms of chip production and power consumption performance. Both companies are large players in the mobile chip market, especially for cell phones, but TI currently leads the charts. Both Intel and TI produce processors and memory for hand held devices too, but according to TI the company will be one step ahead of Intel in 45nm technology.

According to a report by Reuters, TI will double the number of chips that it can produce on each wafer of silicon by utilizing an advanced 45nm fabrication process. According to TI, processor speeds will increase by as much as 30 percent and power utilization cut by as much as 40 percent. For the mobile market, this is definitely a big achievement. As cell phone users know, many of today's feature-packed cell phones are so equipped that battery life has been greatly affected. Many of today's smart phones last no longer than two to three hours of talk time. At the same time, users are demanding more out of their devices.

TI announced that it has developed the smallest 45nm SRAM memory cell, taking up a mere 0.24 square microns. This is 30 percent smaller than Intel's smallest SRAM cell said TI. In fact, due to design, TI says that its 45nm SRAM cell is up to 30 percent smaller than other 45nm SRAM cells. According to the report, TI will be manufacturing the new chips out of its Texas facility, with samples becoming available next year and full production occurring in the middle of 2008. According to TI's press release:

Other improvements in how many transistors TI's 45-nm process can support on a chip can be attributed to the use of an ultra low-k dielectric that achieves a k value of 2.5, and reduces interconnect capacitance by 10 percent. This will be TI's third-generation process technology to use low k dielectrics for reducing capacitance and propagation delays within a device's interconnect layers, and boosting chip performance.

With the mobile market ever expanding, and at such an incredible rate, TI's pressure on Intel for pumping out faster, smaller and more efficient chips will only mean a win-win situation for the end user.