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AMD's ATI division has shrunk its Mobility Radeon HD 4800 series to use 40-nm manufacturing technology, a first for the industry.

The process shrink has been accompanied by the launch of two new parts, the Mobility Radeon HD 4860 and 4830, which have already begun shipping. AMD executives said they believe that Asus, MSI and Toshiba will all have announcements at the CeBIT show this week, which most likely will include design wins for the new parts. "We believe that this is an inflection point in the industry and we are again taking the crown on 45-n, parts just as before we were the first to be in 55-nm tech, said Asif Rehman, a product manager for AMD.

Although the process shrink allows the graphics chips to run faster, but within the same thermal envelop as the 55-nm parts, the 4860 won't be the most powerful arrow in AMD's quiver. That title is still held by the 4870, still arguably the fastest part, Rehman said.

The 4860 and the 55-nm 4850 are essentially the same part, Rehamn said, although the process shrink to 40 nm allows the 4860 to operate at 650 MHz, about 10 percent faster than the 4850, which runs at 500 MHz. The 4830 is slightly slower, although the exact clock speed will depend on which type of memory it will be paired with; if it's GDDR-3, the 4830 will be clocked at 550 MHz, while a 4830 paired with GDDR-5 memory will be clocked at 600 MHz, Rehman said.

Architecturally, however, the 55-nm 4800 series parts and the new 45-nm 4800 introductions have some significant differences. The 40-nm Mobility Radeon HD parts contain 640 stream processors, versus 800 for the 55-nm products. The memory bus width is also 128 bits wide, half that of the 55-nm products. One advantage: audio over the DisplayPort connector, a feature that the 55-nm parts lack.

Rival Nvidia is expected to announce its own 40-nm parts this quarter.