14 DAY TRIAL // In the fourth quarter of this year, Intel plans to release a new series of Atom processors that will be based on the 32nm Cedar Trail architecture. This CPU series will include two desktop and two mobile chips, the latter of which have just been detailed.
These new chips will go by the name of Atom N2600 and Atom N2800 and just like their desktop counterparts feature two processing cores with a total of 1MB of Level 2 cache memory.
Their operating frequencies however, have been reduced in order to make them better suited for the mobile environment, and the Intel Atom N2800 works at 1.86GHz, while the less powerful N2600 is clocked at 1.6GHz.
Outside of the increased processing speed, the N2800 also sports an integrated 1066MHz memory controller as well as a 640MHz on-die GMA 3650 GPU that is based on a PowerVR core.
This adds a series of multimedia oriented capabilities to the Cedar trail platform including support for Blu-ray 2.0 video playback.
The same graphics PowerVR graphics unit is also used for the N2600, but, this time, the GPU operating frequency has been lowered to 400MHz.
Compared to its older brother, the N2600 also comes with a slower memory controller that supports DDR3 DIMMs clocked as high as 800MHz.
As mentioned earlier, the Atom Cedar Trail platform is scheduled for a Q4 2011 launch and prices will be set lower than $55 for D2000-series chips, while N2000 processors will cost less than $50 USD.
At about the same time (in late Q3), AMD will also release three C and E-series low-power APUs which will feature improved clock speeds.
Right now, it's pretty hard to predict how these processors will stack up against each other, but Atom's graphics performance is expected to lag behind the Radeon HD 6310 GPU. (via CPU-World)