New Intel Atom family of tiny low-power processors
By Ken Mitchell
Intel has announced the newest member of their silicon family. The Intel Atom has been designed specially for mobile internet devices (MID) and a new class of internet specific devices arriving later this year.
The Atom, formerly code named Silverthorne, is based on a completely new microarchitecture designed for small devices and low power consumption. The thermal design power (TDP) consumption has been slashed from 35 watts in the mobile Core 2 Duo processors, to less than 2.5 watts in the new Atom.
The processor does not require new instruction sets, sticking to x86. As well, the Atom has multi-threading capability. Looking at it, it looks about the size of an American nickel. “This is our smallest processor built with the world’s smallest transistors,” said Intel Executive Vice President and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Sean Maloney. “This small wonder is a fundamental new shift in design, small yet powerful enough to enable a big Internet experience on these new devices. We believe it will unleash new innovation across the industry.”
The brother to the Atom, the Intel Centrino Atom, was also announced. Codenamed Diamondville, the Centrino Atom is also for MIDs using multi-chip processing.
With more demanding uses for mobile devices, consumers are requiring faster CPUs and more battery life. Innovations such as the Atom are what makes it possible to carry our whole world with us in our coat pocket.
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March 3rd, 2008
At first I thought the name Atom would be a good idea for Intel’s new chip range, but the more I think about it the more I hope that their chips won’t actually be anything like an atom and actually have some substance!