Intel to Drop the Atom Name Due to Poor Brand Image – Report

Starting with the launch of the Cedar Trail platform, Intel plans to stop using the Atom name for its low-power processor series due to poor brand image, says a report citing industry sources that recently hit the Web.

The rebrand is expected to happen sometime next year, since Cedar Trail won't reach retail availability until the beginning of 2012.

According to DigiTimes, the move is said to come as a response to the slow sales of Atom processors, an issue the Santa Clara chip giant believes is partially cased by the poor image associated by users with the “Atom” name.

The rebranding scheme is said to cover the Intel's N-, D-, Z- and E-series processors for netbooks, nettops, handhelds, embedded devices and other products. Current processors will retain the Atom designation.

The naming scheme Intel plans to use for its next-generation Atom processors is not yet known at this time.

Intel's first Atom processors were announced in 2008 at the company's Intel Developer Forum. The CPUs introduced back then were released into the Atom Z5xx and N2xx series an were based on the Diamondville and Silverthorne architecture.

As mentioned previously, Intel is expected to launch the Cedar Trail platform before the end of 2011. This will be comprised of processors based on the Cedarview architecture and of the Intel NM10 chipset.

The chip maker plans to release both desktop and mobile “Atom” parts and the most important change brought is the integration of an on-die graphics core based on a PowerVR GPU.

Thanks to this new addition, these processors will get hardware acceleration support for Full HD video, including Blu-ray content.

The next “Atom” processors to arrive after Cedar Trail will be based on the Medfield architecture and target smartphones and tablets as well as other low-power mobile devices.