14 DAY TRIAL // Santa Clara, California-based Intel, world's largest vendor of computer processors, has recently unveiled a couple of details regarding its upcoming Atom platform, slated for debut before the end of this year. Codenamed Pine Trail, the new platform delivers a number of new features that are expected to provide an enhanced performance and a better power consumption for netbooks and nettops. In addition, the chip maker also announced the beta version of its Linux-based Moblin 2.0 operating system, in an attempt to better compete with the growing success of Microsoft's Windows XP OS, which the Redmond, Washington-based software giant ships for this computer segment.
According to the details presented by Chipzilla, the Pine Trail platform will change the 3-chip architecture present in the company's current netbook platform, to a 2-chip configuration. This has been done thanks to a redesign of the Pineview processor, which will incorporate the CPU, the memory controller and the graphics processing unit on a single chip, designed using Intel's current 45nm process technology. The Pineview will be connected trough Intel's DMI (Desktop Management Interface), with the Tiger Point Soutbridge, which will deliver support for SATA drives, USB, PCI Express and Intel's HD Audio. Unfortunately, the chip maker wasn't very specific on the details of Tiger Point.
“We have a processor, we have a chipset, and we have an I/O hub. What we've done is reduce that three-chip partition to a two-chip partition,” said Noury Al-Khaledy, general manager of Nettop and Netbook Computing at Intel.
In addition to the details of the upcoming Atom platform, Intel also took the opportunity to announce the beta of the new Mobilin 2.0 operating system, a Linux-based OS designed and optimized by Intel for smaller screens on netbooks and mobile Internet Devices (MIDs). The OS has been designed to provide a better power consumption for the aforementioned devices and allow system vendors to reduce the price of netbooks, nettops and MIDs. “We're doing Moblin to unify Linux across all these segments,” said Doug Fisher, general manager at Intel's software and services group.
According to available details, the new OS includes a new interface, dubbed M-Zone, which replaces the desktop and is meant to be an “entry point to the Netbook and Nettop,” as Intel mentions in a statement.
One of the biggest announcements made by the chip maker is that the Pine Trail platform is expected to be available to market before the year's end. There are also some chances that early designs of the platform will be showcased during this year's Computex show in Taiwan.
