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Intel launches Atom Z670 for tablet devices
CHIPMAKER Intel has updated its Atom family with the Z670 Oak Trail processor that is designed for tablets.
Intel has enjoyed significant success with its Atom processor in netbooks, however as tablets becomes the next big cash cow the firm is in danger of sitting back and doing nothing while ARM takes all the glory. Therefore Chipzilla's Atom Z670 processor is likely to be one of the firm's most important chips in a long time.
When mated with Intel's Express SM35 chipset, the Atom Z670 processor becomes part of its Oak Trail system, the successor to last year's Pine Trail. The 1.5GHz processor, which can have one or two cores, has Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator 600 and 512KB of Level 2 cache on the same chip. Memory support tops out at single channel DDR2 800MHz with 2GB maximum capacity.
Intel's Atom Z670 will be fabricated at 45nm with a 3W thermal design power, and the company says that tablets based on the Atom Z670 are scheduled to appear in the second quarter of 2011. Fujitsu's Stylistic tablet that was demonstrated for The INQUIRER will be running Intel's Oak Trail technology.
One of the big selling points of Intel's Atom Z670 is the ability to support Microsoft's Windows 7 alongside Google's Android and Intel's own Meego. However Intel is confident that Oak Trail's appeal extends beyond just Windows 7 support, saying that device manufacturers want a single chip that can support many operating systems.
Intel also said that 2013 will see the next big advance for its Atom line of processors when it moves to 22nm production. At this point Intel didn't give out any codenames, but it did say that that will be the first chip to feature technology from its acquisition of McAfee.
For the time being, Intel's Atom Z670 offers the firm a final chance to defend its complex x86 architecture before Windows support comes to ARM chips. µ
Tags: Intel
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Look... the iPad has a 25 Wh battery and lasts for 10 hs (yes, it does, mine does :). That means that whatever you do you have to be at 2.5W/h (the iPad is one huge battery with a tiny board after all). 3W TDP ? sorry, that means a 40 or so Wh battery... we want light, 10+ hs battery life, sucky 5hs we get from laptops all the time). The only thing they have going on for them is windows, and MS said they will go ARM for their next version. They really have to work on the power consumption field as Steve T said. And rework all applications and interface on windows to support touch, because there is no mouse... good luck !
@gutzman,
The Tegra2 is a nice piece of kit, but it is hardly going to corner the market. Apple have managed to get by without any help from the Tegra, for example - and they're not exactly a cut-price brand. The Tegra is one of many, many solutions offered by different OEMs - even ARM has their own graphics offering, Mali - which is as easily licensed as the ARM core itself.
To be honest, though, I feel the Tegra could have been more, but NVidia feels that you cannot possibly be a customer or developer unless you live in the US or Canada (they will not ship boards or entertain any development by anyone not living in Europe or elsewhere), so I personally feel totally disinterested in the Tegra. It will be successful, but it is not the be-all and end-all.
The fact of the matter is this: Going with ARM gives you choice, and lots of it. If you look out there, there are tons of manufacturers offering ARM cores of various types - and Marvell is now offering a quad-core Cortex A9 die that will do very nicely for blade servers. It's not just about mobile, anymore - Intel's very business model is under threat, and they know it.
The fat lady will sing when ARM gets a native 64-bit programming model. Due to the highly-optimised way that the ARM has been designed, around 32-bit architecture, I think it will take the design team some time to figure out how to best do 64-bit mode. The Cortex A15 is a kludge - 32-bit cores with a hypervisor able to map 4GB of memory, but it is a start. Even Intel had PAE.
But the ARM team will crack it, sooner or later.
@Steve T,
Maybe they're planning to aim it at Microsoft Windows 8 Professional Fondleslab Edition? :)
But yes, I do not see where Intel thinks it is going on the mobile market - everyone has already standardised on ARM, and Intel hasn't anything to offer that is compelling enough to change the status quo.
You've already lost the big boat of mobile revolution. Some still need cells and tablets running pure X86/Windows7 like they work on usual Win PC! Hurry, many already switched.
And Z670 is still 45nm, are you kidding me ?! (Hearing my chicken and sheeps laughing in the barn). Un-be-lie-vable.
In Soviet Russia ...imagining what would be in Soviet Russia...in Soviet Russia Stalin would GULAGed for that. LOL
The Z670 has a TDP of 3W, and you need to add an SM35 controller hub which needs another 0.75W. An ARM Cortex A8 or Cortex A9, complete with all the embedded IO controllers that you could shake a stick at has a TDP of < 1W. This translates, by the time you've added screen hardware etc, to a run time of less than 1/2 that of the ARM system for the same amount of battery capacity. If leaked prices are to be believed the Z670 will also cost 3 times or more than, say, a Tegra 2. Rule of thumb, a part adds 3 times its cost to the final RRP, so Z670 systems will start at least $150 more expensive than an ARM based tablet.
As for software compatibility, the last version of Android that ran on an Intel CPU was 1.6, so strike that off the list. The users of MeeGo can be counted on the fingers of one hand, so there's no demand for that. Linux and OSX already run quite happily on ARM, so the only thing left worth running is Windows, and the Z670 can't run VT of X64 instructions so it's not even great at that.
Just say AMD / AMD over and over...I just LOVE IT when their ( AMD's ) competition counts them out. Now that they see the LIGHT they will push forward their products they have been toiling on for lo these months to perfect.
Just wait. You've seen nothing yet!!!!!!! ( a mini bulldozer+in ONE chip?? )
AWESOME!!!!!!!
You forgot one competitor.. if you want a Tegra2, you also have one place to go. But look at it this way, the more competitors, the more powerful and cheaper the systems will cost to the end user, i wish there were more than 2 x86 competitors out there for reasons the same.
The problem is this:
If you want to buy an Intel processor, there is just one place to buy it - Intel.
If you want to buy an ARM processor, you can find countless vendors willing to offer customised products with ARM cores in.
Intel is about to be exposed to the same market economics that allowed the PC to strangle the Amiga, Mac and Archimedes - many manufacturers, competing to bring a product to the market, at a low cost.
When the ARM gets "good enough", people will not hesitate to jump. Software compatibility isn't what it used to be, either - the likes of Linux can easily be recompiled from source, as can most open source software. The value of having an x86 instruction set is about to take a steep nose-dive.