Intel's Silverthorne Ultra-Mobile Proecessor Now Called 'Atom'

[MacRumors]

Intel announced today that they are officially branding their upcoming ultra-mobile processor family as 'Atom'. Formerly known as Silverthorne, the new family of low-power processors are specifically designed for mobile internet devices (MIDs).

"This is our smallest processor built with the world's smallest transistors," said Intel Executive Vice President and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Sean Maloney. "This small wonder is a fundamental new shift in design, small yet powerful enough to enable a big Internet experience on these new devices. We believe it will unleash new innovation across the industry."

'Atom' offers very low-power consumption (0.6-2.5 watt) over Intel's laptop-class processors (35 watt) yet preserves the Core 2 Duo instruction set. In theory, this means that Mac software could run unmodified on the new low-power processors. Intel envisions the use of these processors to introduce a new class of internet capable devices.

Rumors have placed 'Atom' processors in upcoming mobile devices from Apple -- either the rumored Apple tablet/PDA or the next generation iPhone.



Article Link

[RedDragon870503]

Call it whatever, I want it in an iPhone!

[levitynyc]

Very cool. I've had my iPhone since October and I can't wait to update it, hopefully this summer with 3G and all sorts of new goodies including this chip.

[noodle654]

Sweet name.

[notjustjay]

Originally Posted by noodle654

Sweet name.

The fundamental building block of all kinds of new mobile devices.

I like!

[iDAG]

I wonder what would happen if Intel made a processor smaller than that one. What would they call it???

[dguisinger]

Originally Posted by iDAG

I wonder what would happen if Intel made a processor smaller than that one. What would they call it???

...its kinda like taking the Pentium which pent refered to 5th generation, aka 586, and then calling the "686" and "786" generations Pentium Pro, PII, PIII, etc. They sometimes lock themselves into these naming conventions

Or...Core Duo 2.....now that was just stupid

[Abstract]

Originally Posted by iDAG

I wonder what would happen if Intel made a processor smaller than that one. What would they call it???

pi-Meson?

[pianoman181]

Originally Posted by iDAG

I wonder what would happen if Intel made a processor smaller than that one. What would they call it???

Quark?

[ipedro]

Originally Posted by iDAG

I wonder what would happen if Intel made a processor smaller than that one. What would they call it???

Intel Quark

[deathshrub]

Originally Posted by iDAG

I wonder what would happen if Intel made a processor smaller than that one. What would they call it???

Intel Gluon®

[Lepton]

Originally Posted by iDAG

I wonder what would happen if Intel made a processor smaller than that one. What would they call it???

LEPTON! LEPTON!

[bobrik]

Originally Posted by iDAG

I wonder what would happen if Intel made a processor smaller than that one. What would they call it???

proton, electron, neutron, you great physicist. And even if this was not small enough, there are still some further options

[Qubits]

Originally Posted by iDAG

I wonder what would happen if Intel made a processor smaller than that one. What would they call it???

I suppose Qubits might work.

[iPoodOverZune]

Originally Posted by iDAG

I wonder what would happen if Intel made a processor smaller than that one. What would they call it???

Nucleus !

(Photon or Electron will be good too)

[MattInOz]

Originally Posted by iDAG

I wonder what would happen if Intel made a processor smaller than that one. What would they call it???

Intel "not inside iPhone"

[winterspan]

Originally Posted by iDAG

I wonder what would happen if Intel made a processor smaller than that one. What would they call it???

The real question is:
Intel Atom -> Intel Hadron -> Intel Quark -> Intel ?


.

[dguisinger]

I feel like it must be said......
...
...

Up and Atom


Couldn't resist the obvious simpsons reference

[match311]

Atom! ... That name is duh bomb!

[sleepingworker]

I guess this means an even thinner iphone.

[Analog Kid]

Anybody know what the power draw is for the current iPhone processor? 600mW is still a lot of juice for a phone...

[i make movies]

I highly doubt this would make it into the iphone anytime soon. I know very little about chips and chipsets, but I would assume that this thing still needs a motherboard, which are still too large to fit into an iphone. The iphone is already jam packed with circuitry.

[retroneo]

Originally Posted by RedDragon870503

Call it whatever, I want it in an iPhone!

With 8 minutes of usable battery life.

Give me an ARM-based processor!

The iPhones current processor can be clocked over 50% higher - (It's a 624MHz processor that is underclocked to 412MHz). It gives good performance at 412MHz, and great battery life.

[11800506]

I would love to see this in the iPhone/iPod Touch but I wonder if it will consume a small enough amount of power, let alone fit in an iPhone.

And it seems odd for Intel to announce this on a Sunday, not that it really matters.

[retroneo]

Originally Posted by 11800506

I would love to see this in the iPhone/iPod Touch but I wonder if it will consume a small enough amount of power, let alone fit in an iPhone.

It isn't suitable for an iPhone, but a future 32nm version could be. It's called "Moorestown" - it has the power consumption we're looking for, on-die memory controller and graphics (like the iPhone's current processor) and is due in Q4 2009.


Apple founded ARM in 1990 (together with Acorn) with ultra low power consumption processors as a primary goal. The first ARM processor was used in the Newton MessagePad.

They sold off their stake in ARM over time to get themselves through a rough patch in their history. It's the most successful architecture with 10 billion processors shipped as of last month!