14 DAY TRIAL // In 2012, Intel will continue its assault on the tablet market with the introduction of a new Z-series processors that will continue from where the Atom Z670 has left off. This new chip will be called Z2700 and will use the 32nm Cloverview core.
Information about this chip is scarce at this moment, but Fudzilla claims that Intel has notified its hardware partners about this chip.
According to the same source, the Z2700 will use Intel's upcoming Cloverview core that is built using the 32nm fabrication process and just like their current counterparts will feature a SoC design (system-on-a-chip).
As a result, the Z2700 will integrated not only a CPU core (the chip could also turn out to be a dual-core design), but also a graphics core and memory, display controller blocks and the all of the system's I/O interfaces.
Thanks to the new manufacturing process, the chip is expected to carry a lower TDP than the current Atom Z670.
The Z2700 should arrive in the second quarter of 2012 and Fudzilla claims that its price tag will be set at $52. This makes it a full $24 cheaper than the Z670, as well as $12 cheaper than the Z650.
In early April, when Intel made official its plans regarding the Cloverview SoC, the company also stated that these chips are expected to start shipping in volumes in the next six months.
The current Atom Z600-series tablet processors based on the Oak Trail architecture feature a single processing core, 512KB of L2 cache, Hyper-Threading support, 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.
The chips are manufactured using the 45nm manufacturing process and their TDP is rated at 3W. The Atom Z670 won't be replaced by faster Oak Trail chips in 2011.