Intel has opened its third 65nm, 300mm-wafer processor production facility, the result of an upgrade made to its Leixlip, Ireland plant, the chip giant said yesterday. More than half of the CPUs the company is now producing are 65nm parts, it added.

The $2bn factory is in volume production. Dubbed Fab 24-2, it joins Intel's other 65nm fabs, Fab 12 in Arizona and Fab D1D in Oregon. Fab 24-2 has been punching out 65nm CPUs for three months while Intel ramped up production to full output. That production ramped helped push 65nm production beyond 90nm output levels.

Intel said it had made this "achievement... at a time when most chip firms have not yet shipped products based on 65n". Who, we wonder, can it be thinking of...?

The company stressed its plan to migrate to 45nm in two years' time. Then it will die-shrink today's Core 2 CPUs. That 45nm generation will be broadly codenamed 'Penryn' and be accompanied by its successor, 'Nehalem', a new microarchitecture.

Come 2010, and Nehalem will be taken into the 32nm era as 'Nehalem C' and joined, in the same timeframe, by 'Gesher', Intel's third new microarchitecture in a six-year span. ®