The FINANCIAL — Intel released its next-generation Atom netbook processor on December 21, saying it will bring improved system performance and longer battery life.
The single-core Atom N450 chip is 60 percent smaller than existing Atom processors, and consumes close to 20 percent less power, said Anil Nanduri, director of netbook marketing at Intel. The chip draws about 5.5 watts of power, according to an Intel specification sheet, PC World reports. The small footprint of the chip could also lead to new device designs, like thinner netbooks and tablets, Nanduri said. Netbooks with N450 chips will be shown by major vendors at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show to be held in Las Vegas Jan. 7-10.
Netbooks are low-cost PCs characterized by small screens and keyboards, and are designed to surf the Internet and run basic applications like word processing, according to the same source. The category took off when Asus introduced the Eee PC in 2007, and today top vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer and Lenovo offer netbooks.
Intel has not released pricing for the chip, but said new PCs will be available at existing netbook prices, The Inquirer net informs. The Atom N450 has a clock speed of 1.66GHz, which is the same as the N280 netbook chip. But since it is smaller and uses less energy you can do a lot more with it. It also integrates the graphics and memory controller into the CPU package so it can process multimedia faster and free up bandwidth for the processor to communicate with other components.
According to the same source, Netbooks powered by Atom N450 will run Windows 7, Windows XP or Linux operating systems.
The incorporation of the memory and graphics controllers onto the processor die is essentially the only major difference between this new generation of the Atom and its predecessors, The Register reports. The chip is still manufactured using a 45nm process, and although access to memory is quicker, the architecture of the compute core is fundamentally the same in-order execution scheme as before.
Atom processors, designed for netbooks and entry-level desktop PCs, were introduced by Intel in June 2008, according to Business Standard. "Intel's Atom processor has fuelled an entirely new category of computing…We're excited to be delivering the next-generation Atom platform as we head into a second phase of growth, powering new system designs with better performance, smaller form factor and better battery life," Intel (Asia Pacific) Platform Product Marketing Manager David M McCloskey told reporters on a conference call. Pricing and availability will be announced in January, he added.
According to the same source, Intel has over 80 design wins to-date for the new Atom platform from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like ASUS, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, MSI, Toshiba, Samsung and Fujitsu, McCloskey said.
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