14 DAY TRIAL // Though netbooks have been doing well even with just the Intel Atom N450 CPU at their core, demand for higher capabilities, especially better handling of multimedia files, has led to Intel's decision to raise the performance bar a little higher. One step was the unveiling of the Atom N475, which has a higher clock speed (1.83Ghz) and, most importantly, support for DDR3 memory. With technology evolving even further, however, consumers find that they want more and more power, which, as always, means that chip makers have to come up with something newer and faster.
Fudzilla seems to have stumbled over something that should have been kept secret for at least a few more months. Apparently, while the Atom N475 is a step towards fulfilling consumer demand for better netbooks, it is not exactly the farthest that the netbook-aimed Atom line will go. In fact, the company actually plans an SKU developed on the 45nm manufacturing process and with a power consumption of 8.5W for the chip itself and the graphics. The name of this unit is not known, but it will supposedly outmatch any entry-level mobile chip by far.
Fudzilla reports that even the Atom N475 will seem a dwarf compared to the upcoming product, which will have not one but two cores, each running at 1.50Ghz. No other information is available, but from just this much one can realize that netbooks based on the new part will be significantly more powerful at a thermal design power only 20% higher than models constructed with the N475.
If these assumptions prove accurate, entry-level end-users will finally see the kind of performance they want, or at least capabilities close enough to what they would wish to see. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing when the Santa Clara company will unleash this creature on the market.