Intel Aims to Quickly Cross Over to the Next Series of Atom Processors

Although unable to release any exciting hardware products in time for Christmas, Intel announced that it was putting special effort into the development of the new line of Atom processors. The IT giant plans to launch the next-generation Pine Trail netbooks on December 21, which will use the Pineview, a new type of central processing unit that integrates the Atom N280 core, a DDR 2 memory controller and a graphics core.

An Intel document allegedly seen by Xbit Labs says that, “Intel is planning for a fast transition to Pine Trail. To generate excitement for the platform ahead of launch, Intel is planning a press release in late December publicly disclosing the details of the platform.”

The upcoming announcement in December will likely revolve around the single-core N450, a 1.66GHz unit with a 521KB cache, HyperThreading and 64-bit support. While this is destined for mobile devices, a CPU is also expected for normal desktops, most likely the dual-core D510, also a 1.66GHz part but with greater Level 2 Cache memory (namely 1 MB). Furthermore, the likelihood of it being accompanied by the D410, single-core chip with 512 L2 is quite high.

Not only does the new Pineview have a DDR memory and a graphics core of its own, but it also provides an x86-64 capability, an advanced type of core-logic set, as well as a Broadcom video-decoding processor. The combination of all these elements into a single processor greatly reduces the necessary power and accomplishes most of the computing tasks. As such, the only remaining function for the Pine Trail's chipset, called Tiger Point, does nothing more than handle system I/O tasks.

This information seems to set the course for the release of another, more highly capable platform in 2010, probably the N470, capable of 1.83GHz.