14 DAY TRIAL // Intel has been making great efforts lately to get into the tablet market and it now seems like all the trouble wasn't in vain as reports suggest that the first Windows 8 tablet to arrive could be powered by an Intel processor.
Microsoft has been making quite a fuss recently about Windows 8's ARM support, so this news definitely comes as a shock for most of us.
However, sources familiar with this device, cited by Cnet, suggest that the tablet Samsung and Microsoft are expected to demo at the Build conference this week will be actually powered by an Intel processor.
According to the same source, the tablet will be available in more than one version, so some models could be also designed to run on ARM hardware.
Showcasing multiple Windows 8 tablets running on different CPU architectures could actually benefit Microsoft, since this way it could emphasize the cross-platform capabilities of its upcoming operating system.
No details regarding the hardware specification of the device are available at this point in time, but it is almost certain that Samsung went with one of Intel's Oak Trail chips for its creation.
The Oak Trail platform was designed especially to be used inside slates and other low-power devices and it comprises the Lincroft CPU and the Whitney Point chipset.
The processors released in this series feature a single computing core running at frequencies of up to 1.5GHz, 512KB of L2 cache memory as well as a GMA 600 integrated graphics unit that supports OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL 2.1 and OpenVG 1.1.
This is actually a rebranded PowerVR SGX 535 GPU that is built using the 45nm fabrication process and run at a higher-than-average frequency.
Other features include an on-board 32-bit LPDDR1/DDR2 memory controller and video encode/decode logic which adds hardware acceleration for MPEG-2, VC-1 and AVC video streams. The TDP of the Oak Trail chips is rated at a mere 3W.