14 DAY TRIAL // After what can only be described as a long wait, Intel has now finally announced that it has started shipping its first Atom processors designed for the Cedar Trail platform, namely the Atom N2600, N2800 and D2700.
The Cedar Trail platform is comprised of the Cedarview processor and the NM10 chipset, which is the same controller logic used for the current Pine Trail netbook and nettop platform.
However, unlike these processors, the CPU used by Cedar Trail will be built using the 32nm fabrication process and features a unified architecture that packs both the processing cores, memory controller (apparently connected to the CPU via a FSB bus) and the GPU on the same die.
It's important to note that the architecture of the CPU cores will remain unchanged from that of the current Atom chips, but their operating frequencies will be increased to allow for better performance.
The on-die GPU, which is based on a PowerVR design, will also be improved to feature much more powerful specs as this will add hardware decoding capabilities for HD content to Intel’s Atom CPUs, including support for MPEG2, VC1, AVC, H.264 and Blu-ray 2.0.
Intel will use this new CPU design for both their mobile and desktop Atom processors and the initial CPU lineup includes three processors
In the desktop space, we witness the introduction of the D2700 which carries dual processing cores clocked at 2.1GHz, HyperThreading support, 1MB of Level 2 cache, a DDR3 integrated memory controller, all within a 10W TDP.
On the mobile front, Intel introduced the N2600 and N2800 chips, which also pack 1MB of L2 cache, but have their operating clocks set at 1.6GHz and 1.86GHz, respectively.
As far as TDPs are concerned, these are set at 3.5W and 6.5W, and apart from the increased CPU cores clock speed, the N2800 also has a higher GPU frequency (640MHz compared to 400MHz in the N2600).
Finally, we would say that the addition of HD video decode support and the low power consumption of the new Atom Cedar Trail platform certainly makes things more interesting in the netbook space, but I wonder if these will be enough for Intel to match the performance of AMD’s Brazos APUs.
I guess that this will be something that we will be able to answer when the first netbooks using this platform will arrive. According to Intel, their debut is set for early 2012 and they will be produced by Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Toshiba.
