The new Atom is known as "Pine Trail," and shrinks the number of chips required to develop an Atom netbook, nettop, or some other device down to two: the CPU package, known as "Pineview," and the I/O chip, dubbed "Tiger Point".
The reduction in chips hasn't quite produced what Intel hopes to achieve in "Larrabee," its upcoming graphics chip, or what rival AMD has discussed with its "Fusion" plans. However, the 45-nm Pineview chip combines the Atom processor, memory controller, and graphics logic inside a single monolithic die. Serial ATA and PCI Express connections will be included.
The result, according to Noury Al-Khaledy, the general manager responsible for netbooks and nettops at Intel, will be a "significant" reduction in the footprint of both the Intel chips and the associated motherboard, resulting in smaller form factor devices. Even more important, Al-Khaledy said, should be a large number of nettop devices that can eliminate a cooling fan and its associated noise. Compared to the existing "Diamondville" 2008 platform, the Pine Trail platform will offer both longer battery life and higher performance, Al-Kheledy said.
Al-Khaledy and an Intel spokesman declined to provide specifics, citing a "trail of breadcrumbs" PR strategy leading up to the platform's formal launch. More details will be provided at the Computex show in early June.
Intel claims that there are over 300 design wins for the Atom platform as a whole, tens of millions of units across virtually all of the top-tier OEMs and ODMs. "A runaway success is an accurate description of how this has taken off," Al-Khaledy said of the Atom.
Intel also does not plan to significantly enhance the graphics controller inside the Pineview platform, a surprise given that rival Nvidia has made waves with its Ion platform, which the company has touted as providing a high-performance graphics alternative to Intel's own graphics chip. Just a fraction of Nvidia's revenues have derived from the Ion, however.
"Fundamentally, we have taken an approach to this market where there is a very large partitioning to consumers wanting things like Internet access, email, and social networking," Al-Khaledy said. "We've put those solutions at price points and a performance level to really please those people."
"We still have that use case in mind," Al-Khaledy added.
"Some customers are using an Nvidia chip, and they can go compete in the market for end users," Al-Khaledy continued. "I think it's one of the best problems to have: everyone innovating around the Atom processor."
Intel also released the first beta of Moblin 2.0, a Linux-based operating system for netbooks, nettops, and other portable devices. Originally designed strictly for the netbook market, the operating system is being pushed at a variety of vertical markets, according to Doug Fisher, vice president and general manager of Intel's software group.
Moblin was designed to offer fast booting and optimized battery life; the second version includes a new "M-zone" desktop that can be customized by different OEMs and service providers, a reference to the subsidized netbooks being supplied by Verizon Wireless and AT&T.
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