The Intel Atom, the little netbook processor that could just celebrated its one year birthday. As is standard in the tech industry, its one year birthday means the chip is going to be overshadowed by its newer, fancier brethren. The current chip won’t be discontinued or anything, but there’s a good chance that the next class of netbooks will use the new Atom chips rather than the current one.
There were actually two additions to the Atom line introduced, the Z550 and Z515. The Z550 is the one that we’ll see more often. It runs at 2 GHz with Intel’s Hyperthreading Technology (its been a while since that was a major feature on a processor), and uses less than 3-watts of power. The upgrade in speed is a nice surprise, though all it really needed was less power consumption for longer battery life which the Z550 does.
The Z515 is a strange chip, that will most likely be found in MIDs (mobile internet devices) somewhere down the line. It will typically run at an under-clocked rate to save power and provide longer battery life. However, it uses what Intel is calling Burst Performance Technology to run at 1.2 GHz when it is needed to. Sounds like an interesting idea, though its hard to imagine anyone running into this chip as often as the Z550.
Intel is the obvious leader in processors for netbooks, and the new Atoms are just furthering their lead. NVIDIA, ARM, AMD and Via are still working on their chips, which may prove more interesting than the Atom chips, but it might take a lot of work for anyone to take the netbook crown from Intel and the Atom.
Read [Wired]
Read [Intel Press Release]
Happy Birth Day to Intel twin Brother…