In celebration of the
Atom's one-year anniversary, Intel's unveiled Z550, the latest processor in the family and as the
rumors suggested, it clocks in at a pretty impressive 2GHz along with support for Hyperthreading, all in under three watts of power usage. Additionally, it took the veil off of the Z515 with Intel Burst Performance Technology, which can bump the speed up to 1.2GHz. In more forward-thinking news,
senior VP and general manager Anand Chandrasekher demoed its Moorestown MID platform on stage at a presentation, which we last heard was supposed to show itself in a more tangible form sometime this month via an Archos netbook. We've contacted Intel for video of that demonstration, so you're just gonna have to wait a bit for that.
Update: The Moorestown demo was (how should we put this)... lame -- from a consumer's standpoint anyway. Instead of demonstrating it in a hand-held MID, Intel was again showing off silicon in a desktop rig strapped to enough life support to keep AMD afloat. The demo did show the 10x less idle power consumption promised but we've got a ways to go (2010 or before) before we see Moorestown product.
posted Apr 8th 2009 1:16AM
finally!
go you, inside Vaio P, now!
go you, hit by lightning in a snowstorm, now!
It's more likely. (For USA At least)
Why? The Vaio P is a great "netbook" type of device but is saddled with too slow an Atom, especially outside of Japan.
uh, what that really needs is ram, better gpu and a whole lot lower price tag, and yes, lastly a better cpu
@Erb:
"hit by lightning in a snowstorm" not as unlikely as you might think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thundersnow
Woooo Hoooo !
Woo hoo indeed, the::unwired have photos of the clamshell QWERTY MID that Mr. Chandrasekher demoed the Z550 on.
http://www.theunwired.net/?item=idf-intel-introduces-new-mobile-device-atom-cpu-which-supports-windows-xp
Z550 + Ion gfx in a netbook = yum.
I'd rather an N280, the Z series is the slower silverthorne variant of Atom originally meant for umpc/mid use. The N series is a good deal more capable, though it uses a little more power.
So if there is a duel core version the hyper threading means we would get a quad core netbook. wow
No, hyperthreading isn't as good as a true x-cored processor. It will be better than just a regular dual-core for certain applications, though. About time, too, since netbooks have really been lagging behind Intel ULV.
Im waiting for ion with at least an 11 inch screen
Wow its already been a year, time sure flies by quickly.
I didn't even realise its only been a year.
It feels like Atom & Netbooks have been around for ages.
I agree, thought it would have been way longer than a year. Shows you how popular netbooks have been these last 12 months.
2 GHz on an Atom that only sips 3 Watts of power?!
that is DAMN impressive my friends. seriously. just think of how much heat and power a 2 GHz pentium 4 of yesteryear would pump out!
+ a lot intel!
It's a shame that the 2GHz P4 would outperform the 2GHz atom. When they first came out I was real psyched because I remember seeing somewhere that they were supposed to be about on par with the early Core Solos. However when benchmarks started seeping through...well
http://laptoping.com/intel-atom-benchmark.html
And I know super pi isn't really a definitive benchmark. But it still is interesting how that 1.13GHz P3 was so close to the atom. And it got schooled by a 900MHz Celeron. I think it's all just part of Intel's marketing scheme. It's ingrained into the public conscience that Celeron = bad and slow and Atom = perky and low-power. I'm not sure what the power consumption on celerons are but at any rate it's interesting to look at.
@BenB
The 1.6 Ghz atom runs at 2.5 Watts, using a lot less energy over the 5 Watt 900 Mhz Celeron M. If you're using a device to browse the internet wirelessly, you're more concerned about battery life than processor power, especially since both processors are the low end segment, anyway.
A first gen centrino at 800Mhz would still out perform these 2GHz Atoms.
how?
jay jay
GHz aren't the only things which measure speed in a processor. There's stuff like cache and other things that affect it. But I still doubt that the 800 MHz would beat it, maybe a 1.something GHz or so
PROTIP: "Centrino" is not a processor.
Sonoma, was it? Or earlier?
(O.O)
I'm impressed.
And AMD continues looking sadly on...
Make it a dual core and then I'll consider it worthwhile.
It's not as if it would cost too much extra- I believe an earlier news post here said that it cost intel $30 to create, package and ship the N270- I can't imagine this is too much more expensive. I'd gladly pay another $30-$40 on top of whatever premium intel's selling these for in netbooks. And I don't think
2ghz dual core Atom with nvidia ION = dream netbook
*drools*
Isn't 3W a bit more than N280? I mean, faster is great, but it'd be more impressive if they could achieve it within the same power usage (and yes I realise it's a different series, no I don't know how much power the previous one in this series used).
(After all you could jump to 20W or something and have an incredible performance increase, but that wouldn't be very impressive.)
The Z550 will use 2.5 watts.
My 4-year-old Dell 600m has a Pentium-M 1.5 GHz + 2 GB of PC2700 Ram. I'd consider buying a netbook when their abilities are at least on par with that setup. From what I've read, they still have a bit to go.
Where's the dual core and better chipset?
I'm curious to know how it stacks up to my Core Solo ULV 1.06ghz. Lying in bed, watching some videos, your lap not melting, your balls not sweating (well...). It's a thing of great pleasure, low wattage chips and cool balls (well...).
do we know when the Z550 will start appearing in actual products?
"which can bump the speed up to 1.2GHz"
What does that mean?
Should it say "up by 1.2"? wow
or "up to 2.2"
I thought that at first, but they're actually speaking about the Z515.