14 DAY TRIAL // Intel has just quietly added a new member to its Oak Trail SoC platform, the Atom Z650 which is based on the same architecture as the previously introduced Z670, but is designed to be used inside less expensive tablets.
The Oak Trail platform was designed for slates and other low-power devices and comprises the Lincroft CPU and the Whitney Point chipset, which are installed inside the same chip package.
The Atom Z650 is Intel's second processor to be released in this series and it features a single x86 processing core, clocked at 1.2GHz, Hyper-Threading support, 512KB of L2 cache memory as well as a GMA 600 graphics unit that supports OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL 2.1 and OpenVG 1.1, and is clocked at 400MHz.
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 a video encode/decode unit, which adds hardware acceleration for MPEG-2, VC-1 and AVC video streams.
The Z650's TDP is rated at a mere 3W, but Intel hasn't yet made the price of this chip public.
Its older brother, the Atom Z670, which also features the same specifications but comes clocked at 1.5GHz, is priced at $75 US.
When Intel launched the Atom Z670, it was quick to point out that its processor has been used in no less than 35 tablet designs from companies such as Fujitsu, Viliv, Lenovo, Acer, Motion Computing and Razer.
Until now, only a few of these have been spotted and even fewer are available for purchase.
However, more Oak Trail designs are expected to make their appearance at the beginning of June, after Computex 2011 opens its gates. (via Fudzilla)