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Behold the power of the Atom!

By Jeff Moriarty (Intel) (33 posts) on March 3, 2008 at 9:19 am

I am eternally in awe of Intel's ability to get a news announcement to all corners of the known universe faster than the speed of light. I am officially the LAST blog post to talk about the renaming of Silverthorn to Atom. If you see any posts after this, they were actually written before me and just took longer to get to your browser because, uh… because you aren't using an Atom processor yet.

It's always fun when an internally codenamed processor gets its "real name" so everyone internally can all call it the wrong name for a month. It's like writing the wrong year on your checks or correspondence each January. There's also an internal push (well, mostly just me) to have all of our processors sound like super hero names.

Getting down to business, this little processor is impressive. More information is in our Press Release, but Atom will be manufactured on Intel's 45nm process with hi-k metal gate technology. The chips have a thermal design power (TDP) specification in 0.6-2.5 watt range and scale to 1.8GHz speeds depending on customer needs. By comparison, today's mainstream mobile Core 2 Duo processors have a TDP in the 35-watt range.

Of course, I'm also required to point out how just ridiculously small these things are. Atom measures less than 25 mm², meaning up to 11 Intel Atom processor die -- the tiny slivers of silicon packed with 47 million transistors each -- would fit in an area the size of an American penny. (Little known fact - Intel has an official group titled "Office Of Comparing Our Processors To Incredibly Small Things", which is why this always comes up).

Since they were specifically designed for small devices and low power, yet maintained the Intel® Core™ 2 Duo instruction set compatibility, I'm hoping developers and ISVs really start putting it through its paces. Given what ASUS and others are already up to, I'm hoping the rest of 2008 is an amazing avalanche of Atom based new devices.

Categories: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Mobility, Software Engineering

Comments (6)

March 3, 2008 10:11 AM PST Giles SMith

At first I thought the name Atom would be a good idea for Intel’s new chip range, but the more I think about it the more I hope that their chips won’t actually be anything like an atom and actually have some substance!

March 3, 2008 11:53 AM PST Jeff Moriarty (Intel) Total Points: 2,891 Status Points: 2,891 Community Manager

Giles, I hope ALL of our chips have some substance. Fortunately we have a very vocal blogosphere that will let us know if they don't. I haven't been a fan of several of our product names, but this one I rather like.

March 3, 2008 3:40 PM PST Giles Smith

Ah, I was just happing a cheap dig, I switched to Intel a year ago and I have been happy so far!

March 3, 2008 6:31 PM PST EdwardOCallaghan

I wonder if you could do the same with the SPARC ISA ? However I do like the sounds of 2w but x86 == :p Regards.

March 4, 2008 4:15 AM PST jseigh

From what I've heard, it's a mostly in order processor so there might be some effects from this. Though by the time most of us get access to one most of this will have been ameliorated by library implementations and compilers. I'm interested in low power, quiet, multi-core desktops. Despite everyone talking about being green, you don't see too much in this area. Nothing if you don't count being compromised in some way. I'm predicting more of the same.

March 4, 2008 10:35 PM PST Clay Breshears (Intel) Total Points: 15,225 Status Points: 15,225 Black Belt

I like the idea of superhero names for all future products. We already have "flash" memory. The Punisher and Wolverine products should be popular. I think Batman and Superman are a bit too iconic, but Raven and Nighthawk would be pretty cool names.

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