The level of integration brought by the new platform is truly impressive

Sep 16, 2012 11:17 GMT  ·  By

Intel’s 22nm low power manufacturing is apparently not ready yet so the company decided to launch the new generation Atom processors in the same 32nm manufacturing technology as Medfield.

The new platform is called Clover Trail and Intel has selected complete platform integration as the main strategy to make the new generation look considerably better than the Atoms that are currently on the market.

It is clear that the computing power will be increased, but we must keep in mind the fact that Medfield is a single-core chip and the performance increase will come through the means of a doubling of the x86 computing component.

Basically Clover Trail is a dual core Medfield, but if the 32nm manufacturing technology remains unchanged while the transistor count of the x86 unit is doubled, the power consumption can only go up.

Therefore the company has decided to move an impressive number of technologies inside the Clover Trail single-chip solution.

This high level of integration is a sure way of reducing the overall platform power consumption and thus neutralizing the increased CPU power consumption.

By integrating HDMI, USB 2.0, SDIO, eMMC, I2C, SPI, MIPI-DSI, MIPI-CSI, MIPI-HIS, UART and HS-UART, Intel’s Clover Trail will be able to work with an impressive array of features.

The chip will be able to handle up to 64 GB of flash memory, two cameras sporting a resolution of 8 MP and 2 MP respectively, USB 2.0 ports along with HDMI connectors, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless networking, SD memory cards, 3G and LTE modems, as well as various sensors such as NFC, touch input, accelerometer, gyroscope, altimeter, proximity, ambient light and GPS.

This way, Intel has built Clover Trail into an attractive tablet platform while solving Medfield’s main issue of insufficient CPU performance and keeping the power consumption in check despite using “old” 32nm manufacturing.

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