Chip giant Intel has claimed that it has brought its traditional three year cycle down to two years and at the same time said its packaging plans were ahead of its competition. Sunlin Chou, VP of the technology and marketing group at Intel US, told analysts on Friday that while its chip cycle stood at three years in 1994, it was on target to move that to two years by next year, from .25 micron processs technology to .18 micron. He also disclosed more details of its .18 micron plans, which will include 16M of SRAM and lead to speeds of 800MHz over the next 18 months. Following that, Intel will be able to manufacture 1GHz chips, he said. But he confirmed that Intel would not move away from its SOI technology to copper interconnects just yet. Chou said that its flip-chip attach socket meant a shorter electrical path than the socket approach it currently adopts. Its organic land grid array (OLGA) was an advance over AMD, IBM and Motorola technology which used a ceramic substrate with non copper interconnects. ®