After all the recent rumors, Intel has finally decided to go official with its highly anticipated dual-core Atom processor, designed for the already established small sized, low-power portable computer systems, or netbooks. According to the company, the new CPU is expected to be launched next month and will expand the company's netbook processor offer.

A number of details have been provided, some of which, like the name of the product, have been hinted by the past rumors. The Atom 330 will be featured at the same 1.6GHz core speed as Intel's first Atom CPU, the single-core N270. Furthermore, like the N720 chip, the Atom 330 will run on the same 533MHz bus, although, thanks to the dual-core processor architecture, the 330 model should be significantly faster than the N270.

Other features include a HyperThreading support for each processor and a total on-die L2 cache of 1MB, with 512K for each core. On the other hand, Intel decided to keep the 945C chipset for the new Atom processor, which could actually lower the performance of the soon-to-be released CPU. That's because the new D945GCLF2 motherboard is essentially the same as the old N270-supporting D945GCLF, but comes with a few more features. Unlike the old mobo, the new one will support both gigabit Ethernet and six-channel HD audio. Other than that, it has the same one DIMM slot and one PCI slot, which will not provide system builders with more possibilities for upcoming netbooks and nettops.

The release of the dual-core Atom could also enable system vendors, like ASUS, MSI and Acer, to update their netbook and nettop offer with high-performance Atom 330-based products. There's also a high possibility that Dell and HP will be rolling out their Atom-powered netbooks before 2009, which could also support the new dual-core processor. On the other hand, some of us are expecting to see how good the new 330 is against VIA's Nano.