14 DAY TRIAL // When Intel launched its next-generation Atom chips as part of the Pine Trail platform, all makers of ultra-mobile and low-cost personal computers started making products based on it. The main asset of the new Intel chips is their very low power consumption compared with that of previous generations of CPUs used in laptops. Already, there are a slew of netbooks and smartbooks, among other things, that have taken the place of previous-generation mobile PCs. Now that its Pine Trail scored so many design wins, Intel is already well on the way to further upgrading the platform.
Fudzilla reported some time ago that Intel was preparing some new Atom central processing units, but it did not exactly get a hold of any details. More recently, however, it seems that the folks at Fudzilla unearthed branding information on the upcoming processors, as well as their frequencies and a very important detail. The upcoming processors will have built-in support for DDR3 memory.
The products that the Santa Clara-based company is reportedly preparing are two in numbers, namely the Atom N465 CPU and the N455. The N455 is clocked at 1.6GHz and retains the Intel Atom N450's 5.5W TDP. The N465 also retains its predecessor's TDP of 6.5W and will have a clock frequency of 1.83GHz. As such, the support for the high-performance DDR3 is the only noticeable difference between these two processors and the ones currently available.
This upcoming Pine Trail refresh seems to point at a possible new wave of Atom-based machines, most likely featuring DDR3. Still, Fudzilla does not expect these new devices to see any radical performance increase because of the new memory support. Nevertheless, this type of memory has seen its price going down and, if this continues, it is possible that the price of future netbooks will decrease along with it.
There is still no word on the exact date of launch for these processors.