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.



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[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]

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]

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

Up and Atom


Couldn't resist the obvious simpsons reference

 

[match311]

Atom! ... That name is duh bomb!

 

[dguisinger]

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

 

[sleepingworker]

I guess this means an even thinner iphone.

 

[Abstract]

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

pi-Meson?

 

[ezekielrage_99]

I wonder if we will see these turn up in a MBA, iPhone or iPod Touch?
Now that would be kind of cool

 

[Analog Kid]

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

 

[retroneo]

Dudes this is not for an iPhone.

The typical power consumption for Silverthorne "Atom" processor WITH its Poulsbo chipset is around 10x higher than the iPhones!

The Samsung S3C6400 has a max of 279 milliwatts (the iPhone's uses even less than this as it is quite underclocked) and that includes the companion chipset, graphics etc, and uses next to nothing when idle.

 

[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.

 

[pianoman181]

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

Quark?

 

[TopGear300]

Hmmm,

the new iPhone/iPod Touch will be sweet deviceses that run FAST!!!

These arent going in any laptops are desktops are they, just stuff that fits in your pocket?

 

[twoodcc]

yeah i would love to see this in an iPhone

 

[bigandy]

ooh, that's some interesting power consumption

 

[ipedro]

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

Intel Quark

 

[BornAgainMac]

The iPhone will seem Snappier.

 

[retroneo]

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.

 

[Analog Kid]

The Samsung S3C6400 has a max of 279 milliwatts (the iPhone's uses even less than this as it is quite underclocked) and that includes the companion chipset, graphics etc, and uses next to nothing when idle.

Thanks, that's about what I was expecting.

 

[cpjrmd]

The real question is...will it make safari snappier?

 

[retroneo]

Hmmm,
These arent going in any laptops are desktops are they, just stuff that fits in your pocket?

Yes, the Diamondville Atom processor- "Shelton" Platform is going into the successor to the Asus eeePC and its desktop equivalent.

Atom processors aren't suitable for an iPhone.