Netbook Review UK

The Intel Atom Roadmap

Intel has finally revealed that it will be providing it’s next generation of Atom chips to netbook manufacturers this year, putting a lot of speculation to rest.  But actually, it’s not quite that straight forward and we probably still won’t see netbooks with the new Atom processor until early 2010.

That’s because it will take that long for the manufacturers to bring the new netbooks to market.  The new processors offer little in speed increases, but do have significant gains in power consumption in size.  Replacing the current ubiquitious Atom N270 and N280s, these new Atom processors are part of Intel’s ‘System on a chip’ design, combining the CPU and graphics processor on one chip.

Looking ahead, Intel has unveiled that aim to decrease the manufacturing process size by threefold again, bringing the current 45nm process used in the new Atom down to just 15nm.