Intel Atom is the brand name for a line of ultra-low-voltage x86 and x86-64 microprocessors from Intel, designed in 45 nm CMOS and used mainly in netbooks, nettops, and Mobile Internet devices (MIDs). A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a computer’s central processing unit (CPU). On December 21, 2009 Intel announced the next generation of Atom processors, including the N450, with total kit power consumption down 40%. Intel Atom is a direct successor of the Intel A100/A110 low-power microprocessors (code-named Stealey), which were built on a 90 nm process, had 512 KB L2 cache and run at 600 MHz/800 MHz with 3W TDP. Prior to the Silverthorne announcement, outside sources had speculated that Atom would compete with AMD's Geode system-on-a-chip processors, used by the One Laptop per Child project, and other cost- and power-sensitive applications for x86 processors. The performance of a single core Atom is about half that of a Pentium M of the same clock rate. For example, the Atom N270 found in many netbooks such as the Eee PC can deliver around 3300 MIPS and 2.1 GFLOPS in standard benchmarks, compared to 7400 MIPS and 3.9 GFLOPS for the similarly clocked (1.73 GHz) Pentium M 740. The Pineview platform has proven not to be much faster than the previous Diamondville platform. This is because the Pineview platform uses the same Bonnell execution core as Diamondville and is still connected to the memory controller via FSB. This is why memory latency and performance in CPU-intensive applications is barely improved.
| Intel Atom processor family |
| |
Codename |
Series |
Core |
GPU |
TDP |
|
|
|
Release date |
|
MID / Ultra-Mobile PC |
Silverthorne |
Atom Z |
single |
No |
0.65~2 W |
|
|
|
April 2008 |
2~2.4 W |
|
|
Classmate PC / Netbook / Nettop |
Diamondville |
Atom N2xx |
single |
No |
2.5 W |
|
|
|
June 2008 |
Atom 200 |
4 W |
|
Atom 300 |
dual |
8 W |
September 2008 |
| |
Pineview |
Atom N4xx |
single |
Yes |
5.5 W |
January 2009 |
|
