Computer chip maker Intel has claimed that a new computer processors due out this year will be about 40 per cent faster than current chips.
Intel said the new Penryn processors will have the same basic design as current ones but with circuitry that will be 30 per cent thinner - 45 millionths of a millimetre wide.
"In high-performance computing and bandwidth intensive applications . . . there will be up to a whopping 45 per cent performance increase," said Patrick Gelsinger, the general manager for Intel's digital enterprise group.
The Penryn would be the world's first 45-nanometre processor, Mr Gelsinger said at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing.
In a prototype Penryn chip with four processing cores, that translated into 40 per cent faster performance in computer games and video processing, while more mundane tasks such as image processing ran about 15 per cent faster, he added.
Intel held the forum in China just a month after saying it would build a $2.5 billion microchip plant in the mainland, underscoring the growing importance of the country in the global electronics manufacturing sphere.