14 DAY TRIAL // The introduction of the Brazos platform at the beginning of this year left Intel in an awkward position as its Atom chips found it hard to compete with AMD's faster and more feature-rich Fusion APUs, but the Santa Clara-based processor giant isn't going to remain idle for too long, the company planning to respond with the Cedar Trail platform which will launch in the forth quarter of 2011.
The new processors will be called Cedarview and, according to some documents seen by X-bit Labs, they're pin compatible with the current version of Atom and use the same NM10 input/output controller.
This is important since it will allow computer makers to upgrade their systems without having to go through a pricey motherboard redesign.
In terms of features, the new low-power platform will bring a much-awaited high-definition video decoder, in order to enable Blu-ray hardware decoding, an improved DDR3 memory controller, and digital interfaces for displays.
Clock speeds will also receive a boost, and the chip is manufactured using the 32nm fabrication process, enabling it to further decrease its power consumption.
The integrated graphics core is compliant with the DirectX 10.1 API, so it won't probably bring DirectCompute support, but Intel may integrate some sort or media accelerators to the chip, in a similar way it has done with Sandy Bridge.
In 2012, AMD plans to refresh its line of low-power Fusion APUs with the introduction of the Krishna and Wichita chips which will feature up to four enhanced Bobacat CPU cores and a DirectX 11 capable on-die GPU.
If the news about the Cedarview launch is true, the forth quarter of 2011 will be quite a busy time for Intel as, besides the next generation Atom processors, the company also plans to release CPUs based on the high-performance Sandy Bridge-EP and Sandy-Bridge-EN architecture.