Intel’s newest line of processors, named Ivy Bridge, are the first to become available from any company with features as small as 22 nanometers (the finest details on today’s chips are 32 nanometers), allowing transistors to be smaller and packed more densely.

Ivy Bridge chips offer 37 percent more processing speed than the previous generation of chips, and can match their performance while using just half the energy.

Transistors on an Ivy Bridge processor are packed roughly twice as densely as in the most recent line of Intel chips.

Intel’s three-dimensional transistors will debut in the company’s Atom line of mobile processors in 2013.

Intel is already working on manufacturing processes for a version of the three-dimensional transistors with 14-nanometer features, scheduled for production in 2014.