Intel’s Pine Trail Atom Processors Officially Announced

Are you ready for the next generation of netbooks and nettops!!! Intel’s has officially announced the Pine Trail Atom N450, D410, and D510, along with the NM10 Express chipset. This means in just a few weeks at CES 2010 we’ll be seeing over 80 machines with the 45-nanometer chips. Nothing too shocking about the 1.66GHz chips themselves, which integrate the memory controller and Intel graphics directly onto the CPU die. The N450 is targeted at netbooks, while the single-core D410 and dual-core D510 are designed for nettops, and each chip should use about 20 percent less power than its predecessor. Engadget did a review of the N450-based ASUS Eee PC 1005PE, which confirmed 10 hours of battery life in regular use, this merely confirmed our what we had already established at IDF2009. There is not going to be any any performance improvements over the familiar N270 and N280.

Via Engadget

Manufacturers sceptical of next gen Atom platform

According to Digitimes, netbook manufacturers aren’t rushing to jump on-board the next generation netbook platform from Intel which consists of the Atom N450 processor and the NM10 chipset.

The article seems to mostly focus on so called “white box” manufacturers in China, of which some seem to think the netbook “boom” is over. However, there are other concerns with the new platform and Intel has yet to prove it can deliver graphics drivers for the GMA 500 IGP of the US15W chipset before we’re willing to take the Atom N450 seriously.

As Intel is using more or less the same graphics core as that of the US15W chipset in the Atom N450 processor (it’s the first Atom processor with integrated graphics and memory controller in the CPU packaging), this is still one of the major concerns of the platform.

We have no doubt that Intel will be pushing this platform to all of the netbook manufacturers that are currently using the Atom N270/N280 and the 945GSE chipset, as the updated platform offers some advantages. The main reason for netbook manufacturers to move to the new platform is that it’s a two chip solution, so it takes up less PCB space which has the potential of saving netbook manufacturers money.

Another reason is that the Atom N450 can be passively cooled which means simpler netbook designs and no failing cooling fans. As we don’t know what Intel is planning to charge for the Atom N450/NM10 combination it’s too early to draw conclusions based on overall platform cost.

Digitimes also mentions that a lot of the smaller netbook vendors are looking at what Acer and Asus are doing, so unless the two leaders in terms of netbook shipments don’t get on-board early on in the game, then it’s unlikely that anyone else will.

More Pineview/Atom N450 details emerge

It’s not even been 24h since the last leak, but already a wealth of additional information about the new Atom N450 has made its way online. Thanks to HKEPC we now have a full breakdown of the specifications of not only the N450 for mobile use, but also the desktop D410 (single core) and D510 (dual core). The good news is that the TDP of the N450 is down from 16W of the N270 to a mere 7W and the average power draw is down from 4W to 2W.

Thanks to the chipset redesign, we’ll see netbooks with a 4-layer PCB design rather than today’s 6-layer design, which will allow for lower costs. The reduced TDP also means that the N450 doesn’t need fan cooling which will simplify the cooling design and further lower costs. The core clock speed will stay the same at 1.66GHz, although the N450 supports DDR2 667MHz memory which might lead to a small performance boost.

The bad news you ask? Well, for starters the NM10 Express chipset will feature the GMA500, the same integrated graphics solution (IGP) as found in the US15W chipset that gets paired up with the Z-series Atom processors (also known as Silverthorne) and this graphics solution has a terrible reputation for poor video performance. Now this is something that can hopefully be solved by more mature drivers, but we’ll just have to wait and see what Intel does to address this problem. At least the clock speed of the IGP is said to be 200MHz which is faster than the IGP of the 945GSE chipset which is clocked at 133MHz, but this doesn’t really mean much without some real world benchmark figures.

A lot less is known about the desktop parts, but but will be clocked at 1.66GHz and the dual core D510 should arrive in the 4th quarter of this year alongside the mobile N450. The single core D410 won’t arrive until the first quarter of 2010 if this information is correct. None of the new Atom processors will supports Intel’s virtualization technologies, but this wasn’t really expected, but all three models support 64-bit operating systems, although the 2GB memory limitation makes this kind of moot. You can find the HKEPC article here in Chinese.

Atom N450 could arrive in October

Intel’s next generation of mobile Atom processor currently known as Pine Trail, might arrive as soon as in October according to a story on Digitimes. The new processor is also said to be given the official name of Atom N450. This is still a single core processor, so for now, forget about a dual core mobile Atom processor. The chipset designed to go with the Atom N450 has so far been known as Tiger Point, it the official name is said to be NM10.

The Atom N450 is the first Atom processor to integrate the memory controller and PCI Express controller among other features into the CPU packaging. It will be interesting to see what this next generation Atom platform will have to offer both in terms of performance and least not in terms of battery life improvements. We’re not going to be missing the 945GSE chipset as long as the new Atom platform from Intel offers an overall better solution. You can find the Digitimes story here