TG Daily In-Depth – Intel officially launched its new Atom processor, previously code-named Silverthorne (for Mobile Internet Devices) and Diamondville (for Netbooks and Nettops), which carries the hopes of the company to ignite a big growth phase - one that exceeds the most important blockbuster in the company’s history: The 486 processor. Read the announcement as well as technical details, performance estimates and the reasons why Atom may succeed (or fail) in detail here on TG Daily.

Atom processor (bottom) and SCH chipset (All images in this article are available in enlarged versions in our image gallery at the end of this article)

Baby Centrino is born: Having unveiled the brand some time ago, the company has announced the new CPU at its Spring IDF, which opened earlier today in Shanghai, China. This first series is based on the low-power “Silverthorne” variant targeting Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs). Intel is offering five different versions of the chip, ranging from 800 MHz to a 1.86 GHz clock speed, power consumption between 0.6 watts and 2.4 watts, FSB400 to FSB533, multithreading support and prices that range from $45 to $160 (including the “Poulsbo” chipset, which is now officially called “System Controller Hub” or short “SCH”).

In a nutshell, Intel says that the Atom CPU will deliver “the best Internet experience in your pocket”. That claim is partially based on the firm’s target market of portable communication devices with a 5” screen that cover navigation features, Internet connectivity, video playback and handheld gaming. Intel says that Silverthorne will be leading this segment in performance and is x86 compatible. In fact, supported instructions as well as certain technical features are identical with the mobile version of the mobile Core 2 Duo processor with Merom core.

Between 25 and 30 different MIDs have been or will be announced during IDF, according to Intel. 10 of those devices will make their way to the U.S. in the second half of this year. One of them will integrate WiMax capability (since this article was written before the actual announcement, we will have to wait to write about that device until it is announced).    

Before we focus on the technical highlights of Atom, let’s take a brief look where the processor actually comes from.


Atom, who are you?

The UMPC disaster (Intel actually disagrees that the UMPC platform was a failure, since vendors such as Samsung were able to ship more than 100,000 of them) could be considered one of the apparent reasons why Intel is coming out with this new MID platform, which, if you look at it carefully, really is what the UMPC or Origami (as Microsoft called it) was promised to be. A handheld pocket computer you would carry with you anywhere you go. UMPCs are currently powered by the firm’s A100/A110 processors (Stealey core), which is a re-animinated Pentium M processor with 90 nm Dothan core.

Comparisons with the A100/A110 have been made already, and while they are interesting, these two chips are not related to each other. In fact, if there is any relationship, it goes back to the Timna processor (which was developed in the late 1990s as a Celeron successor). Intel representatives told us that some ideas for Silverthorne have been taken from Timna, but the company declined to provide details which ones they may have been and stressed that carried over “ideas” are insignificant. The most accurate description of the origin of Atom may actually be that it is a chip that has been designed from scratch. Intel engineers told us that it was easier for them to design the CPU from the ground up to achieve the 2 watt power goal than using components and building blocks from existing architectures.

In the end, Atom’s beginning was a design that was stripped of everything but minimal features that provided instruction set compatibility, Intel said. Rather than adjusting or fine-tuning existing products, Intel explained that it created Atom feature by feature with the main goal being to eliminate power hungry circuits. In today’s world, you really don’t get closer to a barebones design than that.


Technical highlights: Specifications and hardware features

We were lucky enough to get a technical overview of the Silverthorne some time before today’s launch and I have to admit that the processor sports an impressive design. The size and features of the Atom processor makes it the most impressive CPU design we have seen so far.

Atom is manufactured in a 45 nm production process. Intel squeezed 47,212,207 transistors into a 25 mm2 die (the package measures 13 mm x 14 mm x 1.6 mm). To visualize the size of each transistor, you would have to imagine each of those devices being 44 times smaller than average bacteria. 28% of the transistors represent the core of the processor, while the L2 cache (part of the “Uncore”) accounts for 22%. The remaining portions of the Uncore are distributed as follows: 9% for BIU, 35% for IO FSB and 6% for PCL and Fuse.

Read on the next page: Specifications and key hardware features, power consumption