14 DAY TRIAL // Intel, one of the pioneers of the netbook industry, is expected to update its netbook platform with the introduction of the much-anticipated Pine Trail platform, featuring the new Pineview CPU and the Tiger Point chipset. On that note, it appears that the Santa Clara, California-based chip maker has actually moved the launch date of the new platform in the first half of next year, despite previous reports that it planned to launch it later this year. According to sources in the industry, the move has been justified out of a need for the market to settle.
According to Digitimes Research Senior Analyst Joanne Chien, the Intel Atom N450 processor, which was expected to make an appearance at the upcoming IDF show in September, has been pushed back from its original Q4 2009 launch date to later in H1 2010. The reason behind this decision is that Intel wants to avoid impacting the current netbook market in the second half of 2009.
The next-generation Intel Atom N450 processor, codenamed Pineview, has been designed using the chip maker's 45nm manufacturing process and is meant to lower the power requirements of the netbook platform. The new processor adopts a different architecture, incorporating the memory controller and the graphics onto the CPU, while the Tiger Point chipset incorporates the I/O, like SATA, USB 2.0, PCI Express and Intel HD Audio. This solution is a step forward from Intel's traditional three-chip platforms and further improves the netbook's power specifications.
If the report turns out to be true, this could be a great opportunity for NVIDIA to grab some of the market share Intel has gained with its successful Atom N270 and 945 chipset. The NVIDIA Ion platform combines an Atom processor with an NVIDIA chipset, incorporating a GeForce graphics core that offers more performance than Intel's integrated graphics solution.