Intel Atom dev program launched, seeks to inspire netbook-centric applications
By Darren Murph 
posted September 22nd 2009 3:48PM
posted September 22nd 2009 3:48PM
Granted, we know that's not exactly the case here -- after all, even we wouldn't argue that some applications could benefit from being re-written to operate on a 10.1-inch display -- but it still feels like Intel's pushing software programmers to cater to underwhelming hardware rather than innovating its chips to work faster and more efficiently. There's no doubt that this feeling is compounded by just how long we've been waiting for a new wave of Atom CPUs, but at long last, we digress. The program actually has quite a few positive merits, such as striving to "reduce overhead and streamline the creation of new applications" for smaller devices -- something that would benefit every user regardless of processor. So far, both Acer and Dell have voiced their support for the program, giving us at least a modicum of reassurance that the Aspire One and Mini lines aren't vanishing anytime soon. Hit the read link for the glorified details, if you're into that type of thing.
[Via jkkmobile]
gah! just put Windows 7 on everything already!
just drooped windows 7 rc on a plain Jane Acer aspire 10.4. its beautiful! although upgrading to 2 g's of ram was a really good idea.
Yeah! Because I want a cumbersome OS riddled with UI regressions and bad ideas!
in case anyone is wondering.
Acer aspire one 10,4 (with an upgrade to 2g's of ram) has a window 7 experience index of.
2
processor: calculations per minutes 2.2
Memory (ram): memory operations per minutes 4.5
Graphics: desktop performance for windows Aero 2.0
Gaming graphics: 3D business and gaming graphics performance 3.0
Primary hard disk: disk data transfer rate 5.2 (which is really surprising for a 5400)
@Information Central
You're an ass.
@yoyoma
There is absolutely nobody on Earth who cares.
nearly all netbooks get a Win7 score around 2. i think my Eee 1008HA gets a 2.2 the limiting factor being the GPU (as is with all netbooks) i've never seen a HDD score less than 5.
Grammar Police: just because you don't care doen't mean nobody does. i've seen full sized laptops and desktops that get Vista scores below 2 so he actually makes a good point. netbook hardware is capable of running Win7 at decent speeds and will work fine for the average user.
Wow for a second I thought this was an iPhone app post... that pic...
Dude, be careful. There are people here that will burn you in fire if you imply that someone was influenced just a little bit from looking at an Apple product. No one copies Apple! It's unpossible!
Too little too late.
I have a dell mini 9 w/ os x installed. It works ok Netflix kind of sucked until the new Silverlight 3.0 release. Now it is much better.
Which part was "too little, too late" again?
center of the universe much?
OS X flash on an atom chip must suck donkey ass its bad enough on a proper core2 macbook
well, arguably this would also make underpowered processors more economical for a lot of people. If the "light use" excel users (see: my mom, who might use it for a simple mail list or something) could buy a $300 computer w/ "Spreadsheets Light" and get the same results out of springing for the $600 computer w/ the $150 MS Office, then that's a good thing.
So much bloated software out there. I for one would welcome lite versions that do the same thing, but faster and with lower power requirements.
I hate the vicious cycle of bloated software leading to more powerful hardware, which leads to more bloated software. Many of the tasks we do on computers were done just fine on Pentium 66mhz machines. The software has just gotten bigger.
Perhaps when developers learn to make applications that run well on light machinery they'll learn to cut the bloat down altogether and create faster applications, instead of relying on more expensive machines to run their poorly coded applications.
Microsoft Word 97 requires 8 MB of system memory to run, Word 2007 requires 256 MB. Does Word 2007 provide anywhere near 32 times the features of Word 97?
That sounds like communist talk to me!
I blame adobe. Photoshop kinda started the whole, New features = adding new lines of code to the existing programing without cleaning up/optimizing the old code afterwords.
I would be surprised if you could even play an mp3 on a 66 mhz without it skipping but I get your point. My amiga 600 could do all sorts with its miniscule Motorola 68000 CPU, running at 7.09 MHz
mp3's play just fine on a 66Mhz Pentium (original). They might have struggled to play on a 66Mhz Pentium back in 1997 when mp3s were new and the software decoders were awful but the decoders quickly got a lot more efficient.
It could probably play with 25% CPU utilization or less with the right codec.
Having used a Windows 7 netbook with a touchscreen for a while, I noticed that anything beyond Google Chrome doesn't exactly fit in the tiny screen, so perhaps there's a reason for that. Microsoft had attempted Origami, and it works so-so well by itself.
And I'm sure there will be plenty of reasons after that tablet is released by that company whose name shall not be mentioned. :)
"Call us calloused, but that sounds a lot like a company pushing for "lite" software that functions on sluggish hardware. "
Sort of like people developing things for the iPhone, right? I mean why can't it just run CS4 already? What a sluggish piece of junk.
^this
Todays mega hardware is nice, but it comes with a price. Learning to do more with less resources is a lost art. Code is often heavy and highly unoptimized and why WoW is currently tracking 180,000 bugs.
Basically, our code is just as obese as our children.
Getting back to our "roots" with the netbook and handheld markets helps programmers learn to be efficient again.
This is important because the large, heavy hardware demographic is becoming smaller. Light weight and functional is the future.
Besides, we have no clue what may be in store, learning to code for the future means learning to code for ANYTHING.
How about intel just give up on their crappy integrated graphics and just make good atom chips. They should let the professionals handle the gpu (nvidia). Also does anyone know why amd hasn't produced an atom competitor? Intel really needs to be kicked in the ass in the netbook arena.
oh because ATI and nVidia cards had no problems at all...EVER, infact, they are PERFECT, 500FPS!!!!! COUNTER-STRIKE FTW! YARRRRRR
AMD has one called the Neo. Also keep in mind AMD has a shoe string budget compared to Intel. If you care to learn more look at AMD's stock balance sheet.
@ Grammer
I never said that ATI, Nvidia are perfect. However; which would you choose, an Intel GPU or one from Nvidia or ATI? I would rather go with a company that knows what they're doing rather than one that gives the consumer crap in order to increase sales.
Will I be able to put these apps on my non-netbook Thinkpad laptop so I can have word-processor and spreadsheet speeds that approach what I had in 1990? Where do I sign up?
Wow, that's a lot of text for very little information. Cool though.
I think they're pushing to get people to write for Moblin more than they are Windows.
Are you kidding me? "Innovating its chips to work faster and more efficiently"??? Get some technical knowledge already. The Atom CPUs use 8 watts. 8 watts is TEN TIMES LESS THAN A NORMAL CPU. You think that's easy to do?
The simple facts that Atom CPUs use way less power, and are cheap enough to manufacture
I agree.
Atom is designed for computers that need just enough computational power to do simple tasks: browsing the web, light flash animation, simple word processing, etc. NOT for heavy tasks like video processing, heavy flash animation, music editing, sprawling spreadsheets, etc.
I've owned a Dell Mini 9 (Atom N270) for 4 months. For what I do with it (surfing the web, simple word processing, occasional Hulu viewing) it's fine. All the heavy stuff I do is left to me other box.
It's a low-power ~$10 CPU, don't expect it to perform as well as a Core2Duo!
Sprawling spreadsheets are little more than a wall of text. You don't need 10 bajillion cores for that.
Are you kidding me? "Innovating its chips to work faster and more efficiently"??? Get some technical knowledge already. The Atom CPUs use 8 watts. 8 watts is TEN TIMES LESS THAN A NORMAL CPU. You think that's easy to do?
The simple facts that Atom CPUs use way less power, and are cheap enough to manufacture
$300 netbooks with, means you're silly. Go back to school, stop writing useless editorial articles when you don't know what you're talking about.
People like you are the reason marketing and Engineering don't get along.
PS - your comment system is horrible
"Size matters not,...Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you"
-Yoda
NO MORE ATOM PLEASE!!!!!
It's an underpowered piece of crap.
Developing specifically for Atom-based devices is no different than developing for small devices such as the iPhone, or WinMo devices, or other smartphones. I use MS Streets and Trips, and am dissappointed that they quit including the Palm/PDA versions with the full desktop version several years ago. I still have it installed on my iPaq, and have used it when travelling.
There used to be a time when every byte counted (OK, yeah, that got us into the whole Y2K mess). I have to say I was at first skeptical about "netbooks" because of the lower-powered processors, but after using one, I am very pleased. But I would like to see some "lighter" software for them.
On the upside, you can never have too many light weight applications for a given platform..... I hate big bloated apps.
"it still feels like Intel's pushing software programmers to cater to underwhelming hardware rather than innovating its chips to work faster and more efficiently."
Umm, yeah... You are aware that Intel still manufactures higher profit margin Core 2, Core i7 and recently released Core i5 chips, right? Seriously, the Atom isn't the only processor in existence. If you want something faster then get a better processor. There are scores of choices from both Intel and AMD. Intel's not likely to release faster, low-cost Atom chips until they've increased performance on their low to mid-range line-up. Wouldn't want the Atom to cannibalize the sales now, would they?
All things considered, the Atom gives very good performance considering the low power consumption. Intel is also partly to thank for driving the prices of Mini-ITX systems lower. Just think, over a year or so ago, the best choice was a VIA C3 and you even paid quite a bit of premium for it.
Not sure why the various PC OEMs would all want a generic app store? The functionality makes some sense, but this seems like a "me too" scenario and doesn't help each company differentiate its products from both Apple and their WinTel competition.
www.dellobserver.com
It's called "Wirth's Law" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law). Thank goodness for open-source and how it aids modularity, tuning to various scenarios, and other good design goals. Granted, I do wish we'd see more things like the Synthesis kernel (http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~library/TR-repository/reports/reports-1992/cucs-039-92.ps.gz), but Linux tends to be good enough and oh so very modular and well-designed...
The idea is to get developers to build lean, specific function applications for netbooks. The problem in the past 10 years is the lack of lean clean code. Hardware has greatly improved but coding simply responds by producing applications that are becoming bigger and slower - using hardware to improve the user experience. Vista is a perfect example. Writing an application that is useful and responsive on an ultra low power PC is not a common skill lately. Its the older programmers that have the advantage, starting out with assembler that needs to work in 64K of RAM. A back to basics effort is needed to provide inexpensive or free software for cheap, utilitarian PCs.