A masterpiece – that’s the word Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of the PC client group at Intel (News - Alert) Corp., used to describe the chip giant’s new family of 2^nd Generation Intel Core processors, which it formally unveiled today to a packed room of reporters at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“This is not only the best product we’ve ever built, it’s the most exciting product we’ve ever built,” said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini (News - Alert), who added that in 2011 this new technology will represent a third of the company’s corporate revenues and $125 billion in industry revenue.

The 2^nd Generation Intel Core processor technology, code-named Sandy Bridge, is transformational for a number of reasons, according to Otellini and Eden. It is the first to do processor-based media processing; the first 32nm-based graphics engine in the industry; it can do transcoding seamlessly; and it has deep integration with Windows 7 and will offer the same thing with Windows 8 later on.

Also noteworthy is that it delivers on a single chip 1.16 billion transistors, said Eden, who added that one human hair on the chip would cover 2,500 of the transistors. But more importantly, this new family of products outperform the previous generation by 60 percent, according to Intel, and can offer 800 percent faster response times than what many users on three-year-old laptops are accustomed to.

New features of the 2^nd Generation Intel Core processors include Intel Insider, Intel Quick Synch Video and an upgrade of Intel Wireless Display. Intel Insider allows for secure delivery of HD 1080p content, said Eden, who added that Fox and Warner Bros. are already using the technology. Intel Quick Synch Video allows for the quick transfer of content between user devices. And the latest iteration of Intel Wireless Display enables Blu-ray, DVD and Intel Insider content to move between the PC and the TV.

Intel had its best-ever year in 2010, as did the industry, according to Otellini.