Intel confirms short supply of Atoms

BY THE TIME you read this, Intel will have fired off its keynote salvo at the aggregated masses attending Computex 2008. However, Intel held a telephone conference call yesterday highlighting their big crowd-drawers for the duration of Computex 2008 – so now we can tell you what’s going on before they do.

To those who were expecting juicy details on upcoming platforms like the Centrino 2 marchitecture or Nehalem, let it be known that you’ll be left sucking on your thumb. The conference call was a low-key affair with but a few references to amply divulged material like the Atom (which is officially launched today at Computex), the 4-series chipsettery, WiMAX updates and Anand Chandrasekhar’s Mobile Internet Devices keynote. Over the phone, Intel spokespeeps claimed that Centrino 2 will be so big it will warrant its own launch event lest the message be lost in the background noise of buzzing motorcycles.

Apparently there’s a lot of FUD going on ‘round about the Atom and MIDs in general. The Atoms presented at Computex 2008 – the N270 (Netbook) and N230 (Nettop) are not targeted at the MID market. So before people go running in and screaming the Atom and Tegra are at each other’s throats, this plot takes a twist. Z-Series Atoms are the embedded chips, targeting what seems to be the same market as Tegra. N-Series Atoms are targeting the cheap-o Nettop and Netbook market – they are very similar, however. You can find a bit more info on the Z-series Atom here, and Nvidia’s Tegra here. Back on subject, Erik Reid, Director of Mobile Platforms at Chipzilla, spoke about Intel’s expectations for the Nettop/Netbook market – 100 million users by 2011 – or a bit under 10 per cent of the global market, which is by itself, pretty high.

On the chipset side of things, and although the material provided by Intel has been amply covered by the media in the past few weeks, the bubble-gum question about the G4x-series IGP was followed-up by the whole “CPU still kicks GPU gonads” official 2-minute-12-second discourse. Interesting, considering no-one breathed a word about Nvidia...

A Dow Jones hackette did bring some life into the conference call: she pressed the right buttons (literally) and asked whether Intel would comment on Jerry Shen’s (Asus supremo), statement about short supplies of Atoms. Erik Reid did say that “We’re pretty happy on how it’s ramping”, although the market might “experience some tightness”.

Hey, if they’re happy, we’re happy. We’re just wondering how partners will flog CPU-less mobile parts this summer, considering that most of Intel’s new mobile products have been kicked into Q3 or are in short supply. µ