The processor, which will come out commercially toward the middle of this year, will cover an area of 464 square millimeters, according to Intel specifications. That's larger than expected and larger than most chips ever made.
As a result, the chip won't be the easiest or the cheapest product Intel has ever produced. Big chips cost more to make because fewer can be carved out of a single wafer. Yields--the number of good chips produced from a wafer--also typically declines as chip size increases because of the greater potential for defects.
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