Sony proved once again that size does matter when the company announced the new 45 nm Cell processor that it will be featuring in this year's International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco.

The Cell Broadband Engine, used to power Sony's PlayStation 3 console, will be migrated from its previous 65 nm version to a more compact 45 nm model. Beyond the gaming industry however, this may also help advance different fields of study as the Cell Broadband Engine is also used in areas such as medicine, software and architecture.

The small chip area size will have a more efficient power consumption rate of up to 40% lower compared to its predecessor. They are also looking into improving the design for manufacturability for Cell to simplify the CPU production process.

Other developments in the area of microprocessor improvements also include Intel's quad-core Itanium Tukwila, as well as the entry-level Silverthorne CPUs and Sun's 16-core Niagara 3 chip. All these will new advances will be featured at the ISSCC, which will be held at the Florence Metropole Hilton in San Francisco from February 3 to 7.