A press release from Intel appeared Tuesday that touted its new ultra low power process technology that would be added to its 65nm process portfolio. We all know how important power consumption and heat generation have become to microprocessors in last couple of years and Intel should know better than any chip manufacturer as they have mostly been responsible for the problem in the first place!

Not that I was hoping the press release would actually "reveal" anything of substance about the latest process tweaks, heaven forbid, it would have taken me weeks to recover!

But its still shocking that Intel feels its quite acceptable to push out a press release of such poor quality.

As the release was clearly meant to be one about process technology (it had that in the headline) it took Intel seven (7) paragraphs of dumbed down chit-chat before it actually said anything about the process technology behind the move to improved lower power  consuming devices!

Then it gets better, as three short paragraphs that included (141) words attempted to tell us all about what is actually enabling the seven paragraphs that preceded it.

Intel said that its was using a "second generation" strained silicon process to achieve the desired results. That's actually all they revealed! Yes, they also mentioned they were using transistors with a gate length of 35nm and low k dielectrics, but as it's a 65nm device, the first fact its obvious while the second is a no-brainer since the 90nm era, Doh!

Also consider that a year or more ago Intel "revealed" its 65nm technology to the press and stated then that the beauty of using strained silicon was that it was scalable for several generations that included the 65nm node. As 65nm comes after 90nm this must equal "second generation." Gosh! I never thought I was good at maths, but thanks to Intel I think I am!

So in reality, Intel not only failed to "reveal" anything, it simply regurgitated year old information. Perhaps that's why they dumbed down the whole press release as they obviously think we are stupid!

If you want to know a very, very tiny bit more information about the process tweaks, go to EETimes website, where Mark LePedus tells you what was said in a briefing Intel gave before the release went out. But I warn you, don't expect much OK!

Update: At Tom's Hardware, you can see even more detail about the new process, click here

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050920_161415.html