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Intel’s next-gen Atom platform, codenamed Pine Trail, was amongst the worst-kept secrets of 2009. As early as June we knew that it would be introduced in the first calendar quarter of 2010, and that is exactly what will happen when products featuring the new platform hit retail very soon.
“The Intel Atom processor has fueled an entirely new category of computing over the last year and a half and we think the growth will continue for devices like netbooks and entry-level PCs built around basic computing and Internet usage models,” said Mooly Eden, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of Intel’s PC Client Group. “We’re excited to be delivering the next-generation Atom platform and working across the industry as we head into a second phase of growth, powering innovative new system designs with better performance, smaller footprints and better battery life.”
With obligatory quotes out of the way, let’s cut straight to the 411:
- The new Atom was codenamed Pineview.
- The Pineview is based on the Lincroft family of architectures.
- The Pine Trail platform combines the new Atom with the Intel NM10 Express chipset, originally codenamed Tiger Point.
- Pineview uses an on-die memory controller and GPU, the GMA 3150.
- The GMA 3150 is good enough for 720p playback, but 1080p requires a third-party decoder chip.
- Forget about HD Flash content. The 720p mojo is only good for movie files.
- Pine Trail netbooks are chipset-limited to a maximum of 2GB of DDR2 667.
- The new Pineview Atoms will launch in three models: N450 (single core, 512K L2) for netbooks, D410 (single core, 512K L2) for nettops, and the D510 (dual core, 1MB L2) for nettops. All three chips are 1.67GHz
- The N450 is 22mm². That’s the size of the entire chip.
- Including chipset, the N450 is 7W TDP, the D410 is 12W TDP and and the D510 is 15W TDP.
Intel claims that the refinements imparted on the new Pineview Atoms allowed them to shrink the footprint of the netbook’s components by nearly 60%, while the desktop platform parts have been reduced in size by nearly 70%, with 50% less heat. Lastly, Intel alleges Pine Trail netbooks sport 20% better battery life than their predecessors.
Intel expects system based on the N450 to start at about $350, though we can expect higher pricepoints to filter to the surface as “premium” amenities and OS versions dictate. Some systems based on the new design can be seen in the super official video below, and Engadget has already published a review of the Asus Eee PC 1005PE (Hint: 8+ hours of battery life).
Long story short: Netbooks based on the new Intel Pine Trail platform are only slightly faster, but have much longer battery life. If that’s useful to you, prepare your credit card for January 4.
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