First details of Intel's Atom sequel surface

Early information for the successor to Intel's Atom processor has appeared today courtesy of roadmap information obtained by Impress. Codenamed "Pineview," the refresh will integrate a graphics engine and memory controller directly into the chip itself rather than leave them as discrete components. The alteration would significantly shrink the total size of the already-small Atom and would potentially improve performance by reducing the time it takes to transfer data from the processor to other parts of the system.

The design will also take some of its influence from the upcoming Core i7 and use a direct, point-to-point interface between the processor and the rest of the system in place of a conventional front side bus.

Few other details are available, though Pineview in this roadmap would continue to sell in one- and two-core models and would likewise support Hyperthreading to handle as many as four separate program threads at once. Pineview would launch roughly a year from when Atom began mass production and should ship sometime in summer 2009 for both handhelds and netbooks.

Filed under: computers, industry
Other story tags: Intel, Atom, Core i7, Pineview