Intel has claimed the biggest breakthrough in microprocessor design in more than 50 years, potentially raising the stakes significantly for rivals in the increasingly capital-intensive global chip industry.

The world’s biggest chipmaker said on Wednesday that it would begin producing chips later this year using a revolutionary 3D technology that has been nearly a decade in the making, and which it said would act as the foundation for generations of computing advances to come.

The new technology represents one of Intel’s biggest gambles in the race to maintain and even extend its long-standing lead over other chipmakers in making chips smaller and faster, while breathing fresh life into the remorseless cycle of chip improvements on which the modern computing and electronics industries are founded.