Intel Unveils Three New Atom Chips

Intel lifted the curtain Monday on the three new Atom processors and the low-power NM10 Express chipset that make up the hardware platform codenamed Pine Trail. The single-core Atom N450 is intended for netbooks, while the single-core D410 and dual-core D510 were built for what Intel formerly called nettops but now refers to as entry-level desktop PCs.

The Pine Trail products have been shipping to computer manufacturers for some time, according to an Intel spokesperson. The first Pine Trail-based systems go on sale Jan. 4, he said, adding that Intel secured 80 design wins from such OEMs as Asus, Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Samsung and MSI.

All three processors, collectively code-named Pineview and featuring the Lincroft System-on-Chip (SoC) architecture, clock at 1.66GHz and are products of Intel's 45-nanometer process technology. The Atom N450 has 512K of L2 cache and, together with the NM10 Express chipset, draws 7 watts. The D410 has 512K of L2 cache and a 12-watt total kit TDP, while the D510 has 1MB of L2 cache and a 15-watt power draw.

Intel's Lincroft SoC architecture integrates the memory controller and graphics with the CPU itself, "a first in the industry on x86 chips," according to the company. Introducing the new Atoms at a press event last week, Intel claimed to have beaten smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices to "Fusion," AMD's name for its own GPU-CPU integration efforts that is not expected to turn up in products until 2011.

But what Intel has done with Lincroft and the way AMD plans to integrate its own CPU and GPU technologies are "miles apart," Nigel Dessau, AMD's chief marketing officer, told Channelweb.com.

That's a debate that will no doubt be revisited many times, but for now Intel is trumpeting its new chips' lower cost, smaller package size and reduced power consumption as compared to previous Atom products. The new netbook platform achieves a 20 percent gain in average power and for desktops it's a 50 percent improvement, according to the chip giant.

Intel did not release prices for the three new Atom processors or the NM10 Express chipset.