Advanced Micro Devices, the world’s No. 2 designer of x86-architecture microprocessors, on Monday said that it had begun to ship its first microprocessors made using 65nm process technology. While roughly a year after market leader Intel Corp., AMD promises to shift its Fab 36 manufacturing capacities to 65nm process technology by mid-2007, a pretty rapid schedule.

AMD uses silicon-on-insulator technology on the 65nm production node as well as other innovations found in the 90nm process technology co-developed with IBM.

“Our analysis of the device has confirmed that the 65nm AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor, produced at AMD Fab 36, uses minimum gate lengths of 35nm, nine copper and one aluminum metal levels, strained silicon channel and a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate,” said Don Scansen, lead process analyst at Semiconductor Insights.

The move to 65nm process technology enables AMD to produce more processors on a 300mm wafer, for increased production capacity, while continuing to aggressively scale performance and reduce power consumption. Nevertheless, the first processors made using 65nm are AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors 5000+ (2.60GHz), 4800+ (2.50GHz), 4400+ (2.30GHz), and 4000+ (2.10GHz) with 1MB of cache (512KB per core) and 65W power consumption, which is neither an increase in performance, nor a decrease in thermal design power.

Certain original equipment manufacturers already offer systems featuring and the AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors produced using 65nm process technology, while “leading system builders”, such as Acer, Dell, Founder, Gateway, HP, Lenovo, Packard Bell, and TongFang will only offer the new chips in Q1 of 2007.

Pricing for the 65nm “product in box” (PIB) AMD Athlon 64 dual-core processors 5000+, 4800+, 4400+, and 4000+ are $301, $271, $214, and $169, respectively in 1000-unit quantities.