AMD Gets at Least Brief Bragging Rights for Graphics Chip

Hardware freaks flocked to San Francisco last week to hear Intel (INTC) talk about microprocessors, the electronic brains in PCs. But Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) made some pretty brainy claims of its own.

The smaller Silicon Valley microprocessor maker expanded its focus several years ago by buying ATI Technologies, known for the chips called graphics processing units that generate realistic-looking scenery in videogames. AMD says the high-end GPU it announced last week sports a whopping 2.15 billion transistors.

That’s more features than any chip now for sale by Intel, which prides itself on packing the most tiny components on a given square of silicon. AMD used a production process at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM) that creates lines of circuitry measured at 40 nanometers, or billionths of a meter; that is a bit finer than the most advanced chips currently on the market from Intel, which have features rated at 45 nanometers.

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