14 DAY TRIAL // At the Intel Developer Forum held in Beijing, China, Intel has announced that the company is working on a new SoC processor, code-named Cloverview, which was specifically designed to be installed inside tablet PCs and is built using the 32nm process technology.
Not so many details regarding the architecture of the new chip were released, but the processor will feature a SoC (system-on-a-chip) design that will integrate the video, graphics memory and display controller blocks as well as all system's I/O interfaces into a single CPU die.
“I would like to share some information about the coming products and what is next. Later this year we are going to disclose more information about our tablet processors called Medfield and Cloverview.
“Both will be built on Intel's 32nm high-k metal gate technology, so you should expect even lower power, smaller foot-print and integration of new-features along with stunning performance,” said Doug Davis, vice president and general manager of the netbook and tablet group at Intel.
According to Intel's official, the company expects that the two SoCs will start shipping in volumes in the next six months.
After these product families are released, Intel will start working on building even more energy-efficient Atom processors that will use the 22nm manufacturing node. These are expected to ship in volumes in the next 24 months.
Intel pins a lot of hopes on the Medfield and Cloverview SoCs as, right now, the company is struggling to get its chip inside tablets and smartphones manufactured by top tier brands.
Medfiled will most certainly improve this situation as Computex Taipei 2011 will see the introduction of quite a few devices powered by this processor, but it's highly unlikely that the SoC will make its way into smartphones built by dominant headset manufacturers. (via Xbit Labs)