Intel's Atom CE 4100 SoC to Enable More Powerful Internet TVs

During the last day of its IDF event, the Santa Clara, California-based leading chip maker Intel announced the debut of its newest System-on-Chip (SoC), the Intel Atom processor CE4100. Designed specifically to enable Internet content and services to digital TVs, DVD players and some of the latest set-top boxes, the new Atom processor is part of a new family of media processors. Formerly codenamed “Sodaville,” the new chip is the first 45nm-based consumer electronics SoC to be designed on Intel's architecture.

“Traditional broadcast networks are quickly shifting from a linear model to a multi-stream, Internet-optimized model to offer consumers digital entertainment that complements the TV such as social networking, 3-D gaming and streaming video,” said Eric Kim, senior vice president and general manager, Intel Digital Home Group. “At the center of the TV evolution is the CE4100 media processor, a new architecture that meets the critical requirements for connected CE devices.”

Designed as an upgrade to the company's previous CE 3100 processor, the new solution replaces the older Pentium core with Intel's newest Atom processor core. According to available details, the new CPU is expected to reach speeds of around 1.2GHz and offer support for a range of industry standards. The chip maker has announced that it will work with Adobe to enable support for the Adobe Flash Player 10 on Intel's family of CE media processors. In addition, the new SoC adds MPEG-4 support and 3D graphics capability, while it can also capture uncompressed 1080p video.

The SoC also enables support for DDR2 and DDR3 memory, providing a choice to developers of digital TVs and set-top boxes and enabling a boost of performance over current solutions. It is yet uncertain when Atom CE4100-based devices will reach the market, but the chip maker promised some hardware demos from its partners.