Most companies take two years or longer to switch from one manufacturing process to another. It took AMD 26 months to go from 90-nanometer manufacturing to 65-nanometer manufacturing, for instance. (The nanometer number refers to the length of the average feature on the chip. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.)

The hop to 65 nanometers, however, was relatively easy. 45-nanometer manufacturing will entail several structural changes inside chips. AMD and IBM will also adopt immersion lithography, which involves "drawing" circuits on a chip with a light beam while the silicon wafer is submerged in purfied water.

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