Intel gets Atoms out ahead of CES
Dual-cores for dying markets
Intel says shipments have started on its latest lines of dual-core Atom processors, formerly known as Cedar Trail, and that it’s aiming them at the netbook and healthcare markets.
The new processors - announced ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next month - are fused with Intel’s Graphics Media Accelerator 3600/3650 to give twice the performance of current designs, enough for full 1080p high-definition video. This comes with a 20 per cent reduction in power and 10 hours of use - and apparently “weeks” of standby time on sample devices.
Intel’s N2600 and N2800 Atoms (it’s keeping the name after all) are slimline wireless chips aimed at bolstering the troubled netbook market. Intel also announced it would begin shipping D2500 and D2700 processors for the thin client and high-end embedded market in the first quarter of next year.
The announcement before CES allows manufacturers a talking point for the next round of netbooks and tablets at the show. HP, Lenovo, Asus, Acer and Toshiba will have models out early next year – as too will Samsung, despite suggestions to the contrary. Dell however is staying out, having decided the netbook market is dying.
As for the business of dying, Intel is hoping for major sales of the chipset in the healthcare industry. ARBOR technology has plans for a bedside terminal that will keep patients entertained and “improve workflow management and work efficiency, reduce human error, and enhance healthcare quality,” Intel said in a statement.
The chips are built around Intel’s Medfield 32nm process technology, and the company is touting not only the power and processing savings that come from that, but also the slimness of the design for the tablet market. ARM and Apple/Samsung may not be troubled by this. ®
COMMENTS
Netbooks are not dead.
Tablets are not a long term replacement.
What is happening is twofold:
1) A saturated market is only slowly replacing existing kit, as the existing kit is still good enough, and not really growing massively, and;
2) The new shiny has had a massive bump which will not last.
BOTH will need processors.
I honestly wish you could get an ARMs netbook. Windows supporting it will probably help (as much as I don't plan to have windows on my next netbook anymore then it does now)
The netbook form factor is awesome for what I use it for (amateur writing and as a console)
now if we could get ARMs CPUs in there and a display you can use outside, it would be perfect.
@Armando123
I do software dev on a netbook, decompile dlls with IDA, write and compile code (C with VS2008), check hex files with PSPad and it works perfectly fine. I enjoy 6 to 8 hour of *work* on the go.
I paid my dual core 270 euros.
It has an integrated SD card reader and 250Go HDD.
I'll give you credit that i didn't drop it on the floor so i won't argue on sturdiness. For the rest...
"Intel still doesn't figure what killed netbook"
They don't even seem to realise that they basically killed Atom themselves, unaided. If they hadn't forced it to limp along with piddly amounts of memory and atrocious graphics hardware, if they hadn't crippled its expansion potential, it could have been so much more. All the good stuff like the nVidia ION platform came years too late.
They didn't want to damage their own low-end CPU and chipset sales for small laptops and the like, and as a result they smothered their own offspring. Good work, guys.
Wasn't there also something about limiting the screen resolutions that netbook manufacturers were allowed to use? Maybe I misremember and this was a Microsoft limit, but I could be wrong.
@Armando 123
Wouldn't it be nice to have a slimline metal cheap netbook, with a great battery life. Small SSD, 4 gigs ram. Yeah that sounds like a Mac Air but an Atom based machine could be £199.
