IT News HeadLines (Elite Bastards) 22/12/2009

Intel Atom "Pine Trail" CPUs launched

Intel's initial range of Atom CPUs surprised many for the way they opened up a whole new market for low cost, ultra-portable notebooks which eventually became known as "netbooks" - Today sees Intel launch their next-generation "Pine Trail" Atom platform, which seeks to consolidate everything that is good about Atom into what is effectively a single chip solution, complete with on-die memory controller and graphics chip on the CPU.

Intel declined to comment on any specific modifications to the new Atom's CPU core, instead pointing us to data sheets that suggest that little has changed. This latest Atom retains the in-order architecture of its forebear, complete with Hyper-Threading support. The cache structure also appears to be unchanged, with 56KB of L1 split between 32KB instruction and 24KB data caches and 512KB of L2 cache associated with each physical core.

Even clock speeds haven't budged. Intel is announcing the Atom N450, D410, and D510 models today, and they all run at 1.66GHz, just like the old N270. The N450 and D410 feature a single core that can execute two threads in parallel, while the D510 has two cores and can handle four concurrent threads. All three chips are manufactured using a high-k, 45-nm fabrication process, but their TDPs vary somewhat. The netbook-oriented N450 has a 5.5W TDP, while the desktop-bound D410 and D510 have TDP ratings of 10W and 13W, respectively.

There are a handful of reviews hitting the web of both these new Atoms and netbooks based upon it, so here's our run-down of coverage for you to enjoy:

- Intel Atom D510 review at Anandtech
- ASUS Eee PC 1005PE review at Anandtech
- ASUS Eee PC 1005PE, Atom N450 Pinetrail review at Hot Hardware
- ASUS Eee PC 1005PE netbook review at The Tech Report

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