Intel Atom has found its way into most of current of ultramobile laptops and right now we could just as well call the netbook market, the "Atom-based laptop market". Intel's power-efficient Atom processor has been well received by manufacturers and already the chip giant is closing in on the second generation Atom processor. We covered the Lincroft architecture a while back, the architecture to replace Silverthorne, the Atom architecture.
The current generation of Atom processors are based on the Diamondville core and Intel has named the core of the next generation Atom processors Pineview. Just like with Diamondville, Intel will launch both single and dual-core Pineview processors with HyperThreading technology.
The biggest difference, and we do mean big, is that Pineview will sport an integrated graphics circuit and DDR2 memory controller. Just like Nehalem, Pineview will use the Direct Media Interface (DMI) instead of the ol' frontside bus.
Specifics are of course still not known, but we're still looking forward to seeing what these can do. There is certainly potential for some minimalistic and power efficient systems, but just the fact that we will finally get rid of the ancient 945 chipset is worth a lot by itself. Pineview is slated for the third quarter next year.
Atom gen2 in Q3 2009
Noctua
