Chip Has Record Number of Transistors, Intel Says

Intel Corp. on Wednesday announced a microprocessor chip that it says contains the most transistors of any computer chip on the market.

Intel said it packed 2.5 million transistors on the chip, called the i860 XP. That compares to 1.2 million transistors on Intel’s 486 microprocessor, which is its most powerful processor chip used in IBM-type personal computers.

Increasing the number of transistors speeds up the processing power of a chip. The i860 XP is twice as fast as Intel’s i860 microprocessor, which it unveiled two years ago, Intel said.

Intel was able to more than double the number of transistors on the new chip by reducing the width of the circuit lines. The original i860 had circuit lines 1 micron wide, while the new chip uses lines 0.8 micron wide. A micron is one-millionth of a meter, or about 100 times smaller than a human hair.