atom

Here's some good advice. Wait for Intel's upcoming Silvermont chip.

In a demo Wednesday at Computex, Intel seemed to instantly -- and thoroughly -- obsolete the existing Atom, known as "Clover Trail," in a head-to-head "bake off," as the Intel demo guy put it.

The "current best-in-class Intel Atom-based tablet" (Clover Trail) was pitted against a tablet with the upcoming (and completely redesigned) quad-core Silvermont Atom (aka, "Bay Trail") packing a new "video encoder and decoder."

The benchmark, TouchXPRT, tests "performance of everyday [tasks] such as photo … Read more

Intel's Atom is getting a makeover.

In more ways than one. First, when Intel speaks to customers internally about micro-architectures, Atom is out, Silvermont is in, Intel told CNET on Friday.

Second, some upcoming Silvermont silicon will be branded Pentium and Celeron -- which is the value end of Intel's Core-based mainstream chips.

The chipmaker's reasoning is that some variants of Silvermont now offer performance comparable to current mainstream Celeron and Pentium. That's quite different from the Atom of old, which had a reputation -- particularly in Netbooks -- for being slow.

Higher performance varieties of … Read more

Samsung is putting an Intel chip in an Android Galaxy Tab. That's unusual.

As CNET reported back on May 20, Samsung is slated to disclose -- either privately or publicly -- the next Intel-based Galaxy tablet at Computex, which starts June 4. It will run Android 4.2.2 and sport a 1,280 x 800 display.

What's odd is that Samsung is a chipmaking giant in its own right and considered an Intel rival in Android mobile devices. For example, its Exynos series of chips power the Galaxy smartphones and Galaxy tablets.

But it may have good … Read more

LAS VEGAS -- Along with announcing its new AirWave Bluetooth music receiver at CTIA this week, Cobra also launched the latest iteration of its iRadar sensor device.

We first saw this unit earlier this year at CES. Though both the Atom and the original iRadar detect local speed radars, the Atom is physically smaller and reportedly more accurate.

In addition, it works in conjunction with an app that's available on both iOS and Android platforms, to alert drivers where known speed traps are located. Launched on Tuesday, the iRadar Atom retails for $199.95.

Design The Atom is a … Read more

Samsung may do something it has never done: Put an Intel chip in a Galaxy Tab.

The Samsung Galaxy 10.1 Android tablet is expected to sport a dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom CloverTrail+ chip, industry sources familiar with the product told CNET. The plus sign means the CloverTrial chip packs a high-performance PowerVR SGX544 MP2 graphic processing unit from Imagination Technologies.

Other specs include Android 4.2.2 and a 1,280 x 800 display.

Samsung is slated to reveal the Galaxy Tab at Computex, which starts June 4 in Taipei.

While Intel processors power a raft of Windows … Read more

Analysts are upbeat about Intel's new mobile chip design due later this year. That could mean a much-needed boost for Windows 8 tablets -- where many of those chips will land.

Imagine this: an ultraslim, light tablet with roughly twice the performance of any Atom-based Windows 8 tablet on the market now. (And that's the full version of Windows, not Windows RT.)

That could happen in the second half of this year.

So think of Windows Blue (or Windows 8.1) products similar to Samsung's 0.38-inch thick ATIV Smart PC 500T Tablet or Dell's 0.… Read more

Intel needs to make waves in mobile computing. That's exactly what the first overhaul of the Atom chip design intends to do.

The new Silvermont Atom micro-architecture -- the first major architectural change since Atom debuted in 2008 -- delivers a "significant reduction in power [consumption] and a significant increase in performance," Dadi Perlmutter, an Intel executive vice president, said in a conference call Monday.

Perlmutter was quick to point out that the two -- performance and power efficiency -- are not incompatible. A slide (below) showed Silvermont Atom performing at twice the level of the previous … Read more

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This week on Crave, we take a look at a concept phone that can change its shape when you get a notification. Plus, Microsoft shows off the IllumiRoom projector that puts gamers inside video games and we play another round of "Into It Not Into It"! … Read more

If the current crop of Windows 8 tablets, at least the majority that run Intel's low-power Atom tablet, were put edge to edge in a police lineup, you'd have a hard time telling them apart. Nearly all are virtually identical slabs of glass over black metal and plastic bodies.

Upon closer inspection, some have more ports and connections built into their outer edges, but this stylistic similarity indicates a larger issue: they all run essentially the same components inside, namely an Intel Atom Z-series processor, 2GB of RAM, a 10- or 11-inch 1,366x768-pixel touch screen, and either … Read more