Intel announced a new family of microprocessors that will help the processing of high-definition video via the Internet.

Online videos has become a part of every Internet user’s life. There is not a day in which a normal Internet user doesn’t watch at least one online video whether it’s a funny clip from Youtube, an educational video or even a advertisement on a news site. The technology that makes all this possible is the compression of the movie so that it can be streamed to the viewer’s browser, decompressed and than watched.

As users want more quality to every video they watch online, Intel has understood this need and is launching a new family of chips intended primary for servers hosting video-sharing sites like Youtube, Myspace and others as the burden of compressing and streaming the clips increases on these servers.

The new chips, released under the family name of Penryn, are made using Intel’s latest 45-nanometer technology. The company said the using this technology, they are able to squeeze up to 820 million transistors onto a single silicon die. In addition, Intel has added 46 instructions, called SEE4, which will enable better video compression.

The first products based on the new manufacturing technology will be Intel Core 2 and Xeon microprocessors. Chips for notebook PCs, marketed as the Intel Core 2 Extreme and Intel Core 2 Duo, will be available in the first quarter of next year.