All this performance and power consumption goodness doesn't come free. CPUs are built onto large silicon wafers with hundreds of CPU dies. Wafers are expensive, and using tri-gate will increase wafer costs 2-3% over planar 22nm designs. But Intel feels the power consumption and performance gains outweigh the wafer costs.

Interestingly, Bohr also noted that at 32nm (prior to tri-gate), Intel actually has three families of transistors for different product requirements: high performance, standard performance and low power. This is different from the 65nm era, when Intel offered a single type of transistor to all their CPU designers.

Intel VP Steve Smith discussed product development with 22nm tri-gate technology.

Smith suggested that a quad-core CPU can be built in the same area and with the same power consumption in 22nm tri-gate as dual core CPUs in 32nm. They'll actually have different manufacturing processes in place for standard CPUs and system-on-chip products (which may end up in mobile devices.)