Intel's Pine Trail Atoms now due January 3?
updated 04:30 pm EDT, Fri October 16, 2009
Intel Atom 400, 500 series pushed to 2010
In spite of claims of an on time release, Intel's Atom processors using its Pine Trail architecture now won't show until the very start of 2010, a string of leaks have shown Thursday. The 1.66GHz N450 and 1.86GHz N470 are said by Fudzilla to ship on January 3rd and won't necessarily save battery life. Instead, the primary gain will come from moving graphics to the main processor core, reducing the number of chips from three to two and creating more space.
Both chips should be more expensive than the models they replace, with the N450 costing $64 in large batches and the 1.86GHz part at $75.
Intel is also known to be readying Pine Trail-based chips for nettops, including the dual-core Atom 410 and 510 as well as the single-core D410 and D510. It's uncertain what graphics the two-core processors will use, but the single-core models will use a new integrated graphics chipset known as the GMA 3150 that should be faster than usual for Atom but will still be based on the aging, 2007-era GMA 3100 design. The D410 and D510 should still work with NVIDIA's faster Ion chipset, however.
The launches should also include dual-core desktop Core i5 processors at 3.2GHz, 3.33GHz and 3.46GHz and is likely to be accompanied by mobile dual-core Core i5/i7 processors using Intel's Arrandale architecture.
