Chip giant Intel will demonstrate a 1GHz IA32 processor at a semiconductor conference early next year, it has emerged. The company will use 2000 IEEE International Solid State Circuits conference, which starts on the 7th of February in San Franciso, to outline the features of the processor, which is likely to be the long-awaited (and late) Willamette chip. And Intel is sticking to aluminium for the interconnects rather than copper, according to the programme. A boffin from Intel in Hillsboro, Oregon, will demonstrate a 25 million plus .18 micron six layer aluminium interconnect chip. The performance is achieved using a combination of interconnect aspect ratio optimisation, low-K dielectric and design timing optimisation. Intel says that the design effort is low, compared to the same design with copper interconnect. AMD will beat them to the gun. Sources close to the company say that it will be able to launch a 1GHz Athlon in January, if it so chooses. ®