Intel Atom accelerates: Cedar Trail for netbooks
It’s not just Ultrabooks that Intel is pushing at Computex this year: the chip company also has Atom news to share. That concerns Cedar Trail and a Moore’s Law outpacing shift to a yearly die-shrink schedule: Intel reckons Atom chips will shift through the 32nm of Cedar Trail, past 22nm, and hit 12nm within three successive years. Technically impressive, but for the consumer it should mean significant gains in power and battery life. Meanwhile, there’s also Medfield news for tablets and smartphones.
It’s not just Ultrabooks that Intel is pushing at Computex this year: the chip company also has Atom news to share. That concerns Cedar Trail and a Moore’s Law outpacing shift to a yearly die-shrink schedule: Intel reckons Atom chips will shift through the 32nm of Cedar Trail, past 22nm, and hit 12nm within three successive years. Technically impressive, but for the consumer it should mean significant gains in power and battery life. Meanwhile, there’s also Medfield news for tablets and smartphones.
Cedar Trail devices will be fanless and have even thinner chassis than we’ve seen to-date. They’ll support Intel’s latest sleep technologies, like Rapid Start for MacBook Air-style flash standby and instant resume, along with Intel Smart Connect to allow for software updates even while the netbook is in standby.
There’s also Intel WiDi for wireless displays, and synchronization technologies across multiple platforms. As well as Windows support there’ll be Chrome OS and MeeGo options, while Intel is promising battery life in the 10hr+ bracket and “weeks” of standby time. NetbookNews already grabbed some hands-on time with ASUS’ Eee PC 1025c Cedar Trail netbook, and you can see their video below.
As for smartphones and tablets, Medfield will arrive to replace the currently available Atom Z670 – which has already found its way into more than 10 slates, and will show up in convertibles, sliders and other form-factors before Medfield debuts in the first half of 2012 – bringing Android 3.0 Honeycomb support among other things. Set to go into production later in 2011, Medfield will, Intel reckons, allow for sub-9mm tablets at under 1.5 pounds, despite also having sufficient grunt to do some gaming.