May 8, 2011, Updated September 12, 2012

Intel Israel will produce the chip giant’s new Ivy Bridge processor, making it one of only two manufacturing factories worldwide to assemble the new technology.

Intel recently spent $2.7 billion to upgrade the company’s Fab 28 in Kiryat Gat to 22-nanometer production technology, and it was therefore an obvious choice for production of the new processor.

Intel says the new Ivy Bridge processor is the result of a decade of research, and is smaller, faster and more energy-efficient.

The company called the next-general Ivy Bridge processor the “most important technology announcement of the year.”

In the new processor, Intel engineers changed the transistors’ operating space on processors to operate in three dimensions. Intel designed the Ivy Bridge processor to utilize a more complex silicon structure that includes an additional silicon layer on the wafer around which the flow control is more efficient than for regular transistors.

“This revolutionary technology will widen Intel’s differentiation from its competitors in all segments of the computing world,” said Intel CEO Paul Otellini.

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