Intel intros specialized Atom for cars and other devices, outsources some Atom manufacturing

Intel intros specialized Atom for cars and other devices, outsources some Atom manufacturing

Relying on the same 45nm manufacturing process, the new Atom Z5xx series processors expectedly aren't too radically different from the average Atom, with them clocking in between 1.1GHz and 1.6GHz, and boasting a TDP rating of 2.0 or 2.2 watts, although they do have some "embedded lifecycle support" thrown in for good measure. In related news, Intel has also announced that it'll be outsourcing "some" Atom manufacturing to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (or TSMC), which apparently marks the first time that Intel has licensed its CPU core to a foundry.

Atom 330 is benchmarked

Atom 330 is benchmarked, worse than expected

Atom 330 is benchmarked

Intel's dual-core, 1.6GHz Atom 330 coupled with a 7200 RPM SATA hard drive and 1GB of DDR2 RAM,was benchmarked run-through, and they've got some conflicting details to pass on to you. Overall, the testers found the Atom to be, as expected, faster than the N270, but only by 16 percent. In specific tests, the 330 ran Office 2003 slower than both a 2GHz VIA C7-D and the single-core Atom; PC Pro actually performed the test several times just to be sure it wasn't a glitch... and it wasn't. The 330 performed better running 2D graphics, outpacing the N270 by 41 percent, and it also outperformed its competitors in encoding and multitasking.

Atom 330 is benchmarked

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AMD to release Atom killer netbook CPUs

We've been hearing rumors of AMD's Atom killer CPUs for over a year now. Unfortunately, vapor doesn't help the bottom line -- it does however explain AMD's conspicuous absence from the deluge of netbooks now trumping laptops for shelf-space. AMD's CEO, Dirk Meyer, has promised on a few occasions (as recently as the Q3 earnings call) to unveil "Bobcat" in November. So seeing the chips on display at tomorrow's analyst conference is pretty much a given. Check back then for all the details.

It will be very interesting to see how AMD approaches the netbook marketplace since just about every netbook announced this year seems to feature an Intel Atom processor. Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, Acer, Toshiba, Asus and HP seem fully on board with Intel’s solution, which makes me wonder who’s going to be the first manufacturer to adopt AMD’s upcoming netbook processor.

Intel Vows to Ship Enough Atom Processors by Year End.

Intel Corp. admitted during the most recent conference call with financial analysts that the demand for Intel Atom chips is higher than expectations and that the company could not meet it in the third quarter. The company promised to deliver enough central processing units by the end of the year. Besides, the company revealed that Atom bring higher profits compared to traditional entry-level chips.

“We did not meet demand [for Intel Atom] in Q3 for the product, even though we were up substantially from the second quarter. We are up again substantially in the fourth quarter. Our expectation is that we will meet demand by the end of the year but not the early part of the quarter,” Paul Otellini, chief executive officer at Intel told financial analysts during quarterly conference call.

Still, the head of Intel says that sales of Atom processors were on the high-levels. Moreover, since the CPUs are really cheap to manufacture, even their low prices allow Intel to get profits similar to those it earns on the traditional low-end and mainstream markets.

“The Atom family is off to a very good start, with Atom microprocessor and related chipset revenues approximately $200 million this quarter. Total microprocessor ASP was lower than Q2 but was approximately flat without Atom, reflecting strength in the core business. […] When I look at the product margin, it is a nice [and] healthy product margin and on a dollar basis it is equivalent to what we see in Celeron and on a product margin percent, it is higher. So, if you look at it kind of relative to the low-end of our mainstream stack, it’s generating nice profit characteristics,” said Mr. Otellini.

AMD taking on Atom with Athlon !

Another week, another AMD leak about taking it directly to Intel's minimalist Atom. No, not with Bobcat, but with the new Athlon Ultra-Value Client (UVC) series. AMD is targeting the 230 with its 2650e, a single-core 1.6 GHz chip, and the 330 with its 3250e dual-core 1.5 GHz processor. Both have 512KB of cache per-core, matching the competition, but are rated at 15- and 22-watts respectively, much higher than the Atom's miserly 4-watts. It's unclear if that rating is current for just the CPU or the matching 740 chipset as well, but given the fact that AMD's Athlon 64 2000+ is already quite frugal we wouldn't be surprised if it were for the package. There's no mention of price, and right now these chips are just for desktop OEMs, but laptop versions are said to be in the works and could be quite popular amongst the netbook crowd -- if they're cheap enough. 1.2GHz of Turon can do wonders, and we're hoping for even better from 1.6.

That's netbooks and nettops taken care of - what about mobile internet devices (MIDs), also a target of Atom? Well will the MID platform thus far failing to catch buyers' attention the way that SCCs have, there's no great rush to release. However, AMD is expected to announce its 'Bobcat' chip in the near future, and that's thought to be aimed at MIDs.

Dual-core Atom ready for showtime?

Tranquil PC just announced two new products based around Intel's upcoming Atom 330 dual-core processor, which Tranquil has confusingly dubbed the Atom2 Z330. We'll find out soon enough who's right in their terminology, but cheap-ass speed freaks have more exciting distinctions to worry about. The new processor has dual Atom wafers, for pretty much twice the fun, and Tranquil says that desktop performance is "very very snappy." They're celebrating the new processor with the T7-HSG Home Server, which will start shipping on September 30th in very limited supply for £299 (about $528 US). There's also a DVB-T Media Center in the works, but we're otherwise short on details.