Intel launches next gen Atom

Bengaluru, Dec. 21: Intel’s smallest chip just got smaller. Besides taking up less motherboard space, the new Atom processors announced on Monday consume less power and processes better.
For the netbook user of the future, this means better streaming of YouTube videos, running of parallel applications without the system slowing down, and longer battery life. Quite possibly, devices which are slim, trim, and more sexy.
The world’s largest chipmaker said the single-core Atom N450 chip is 60 per cent smaller than existing Atom processors. That’s because the CPU in the current platform integrates the graphics and memory controller. However, this does not mean that netbooks with thickness of less than one inch can become the order of the day immediately. It may take at least another quarter for form factors to shrink.
PC maker Acer India’s product manager of consumer business Anup Agrawal says the chip’s footprint on the motherboard may have reduced because of the integration of the CPU and the graphics chipset but form factors cannot shrink until the size of the motherboard reduces too. Motherboard vendors will take some time to redesign their ware.
Another key differentiator of the N450 over the previous generation chip is the fact that is consumes 20 per cent less power. “Lower the power dissipation, less is the battery usage. Our standard netbooks have more than 7 hours of battery life. With the new platform, it can have more than 8 hours,” Agrawal says.
Both the Atom processor and netbooks emerged as perfect recession products in 2009 but industry watchers peg the segment to continue growing even after the global economy makes a turnaround. Netbooks, typically low-priced, offer basic computing and is a vehicle to connect to the Net. Many use it for online networking and for accessing video.
Intel noted that since the first Atom processors for netbooks and entry-level desktop PCs was announced in June 2008, it has shipped over 40 million Atom chips.
The chipmaker says it has over 80 design wins with the new platform from OEMs such as ASUS, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, MSI, Toshiba, Samsung and Fujitsu.
Systems using N450 will be available from January.