Intel purportedly fast-tracking Pine Trail platform, forgetting all about N270 / N280 at CES
By Darren Murph 
posted November 9th 2009 9:56AM
posted November 9th 2009 9:56AM
Say it with us now: "freaking finally!" The world at large seems perfectly fine with using Atom N270 and N280 CPUs for the rest of eternity (judging by the latest netbook sales figures, anyway), but techies like us are sick and tired of dabbling with the same underpowered chips and the same lackluster capabilities. At long last, we're hearing that Intel will supposedly officially announce the Pine Trail platform in late December, with a raft of netbooks based around the new Pineview chips hitting the CES show floor in January. The 1.66GHz Atom N450, dual-core 1.66GHz Atom D510 and Atom D410 are expected to be all the rage at the show, with the existing N270 and N280 making an expedited trip to the grave. Good riddance, we say.
whee
x9999999999
DOWN WITH N270!!!!!!
It's about time.
I really do like the MID form factor, however that most MID will only last less than 2.5 hours. I really hope that they make a MID that will last at least 5 hours and less than $400.
The PineTrail chips should use less energy due to integrated graphics/memory controllers.
But if you don't need any Windows app, you could also consider devices like the Archos 5 Internet tablet...
Forget the CPU. N270 ain't so bad.
The real question is what's replacing that POS 945 chipset?
An on-die northbridge (memory controller and X3150 integrated graphics) which is faster than the GMA 500/GMA 950 and uses way less power.
The graphics hardware still sucks, still no RNG, out-of-order processing and x64 superset but it's okay for browser and stuff.
Might actually play some games properly too...
If the power usage has made the huge step it is hyped for I might actually be interested, otherwise I'll go for the Neo X2 which actually has proper graphics hardware.
The Pine Trail CPUs does support the x64 instruction set, which makes it worth considering. But yeah, I don't think it still has out-of-order execution.
"...but techies like us are sick and tired of dabbling with the same underpowered chips and the same lackluster capabilities."
I'm all for more grunt for my buck, but I'm not sure I ever really pushed the N280 to it's max.
Internet, email office documents... I just use it for the basics. Am I doing something wrong? I feel like I'm a techie, too.
I suppose full screen Hulu is where I find my EeePC lacks.
As far as the article is concerned, I'm all for faster low-energy chips as long as they remain low-energy and low cost. If these things are going to cost a lot more and suck a lot more energy then I'd rather just go with a normal Core 2 Duo processor or something.
You're not doing anything wrong, but there are those of us who want to buy a $200 device that we can dock to our tv to play 1080p video files, as well. :-)
You're not doing anything wrong. But it would be nice if you could do it for longer than 3 hours without needing to fit a monster-sized battery to a little netbook; hopefully Pine Trail will make some significant reduction in the amount of power used by the previous N280+graphics combination.
Great. Now if VIA can get the Nano L3000 line out and get their dual-core Nano's on the move we could actually have like, non-crappy netbooks.
I'm game.
I've pretty much given up on Via - the Nano has been available for over a year now, but I'm not aware of any netbook that uses it. I doubt this situation will change much with the next version.
Same goes for the AMD Neo platform...and unfortunately, Nvidia has stated that they won't design x86-compatible chips.
And that's a real shame. Intel needs worthy competitor to light a fire under their lazy asses, but apparently other companies can't/won't compete in the netbook area.
VIA's Nano will be very interesting when nVidia will make chipsets for it. The experience nVidia has done with their Tegra hardware can be used to make proper low-power chipsets for the L3000 series.
At that point we will all forget the Atom Pineview. Unless the Pineview will really manage to be as economic as it is hyped for.
@L:
Samsung NC20
Lenovo S12
Cloudbook MAX
But yes, the adoption rate of the VIA Nano is very low. I'm going to chalk that up to pressure from Intel and a bad puplic perception of the VIA CPUs.
For instance, every review of the Cloudbook rated it as having a CPU about as fast as the 900mhz Celeron in the first eeePC.
What every reviewer failed to note was that in the gOS distros the Cloudbook shipped with, it was locked at 800mhz (cpu-freq needed recompiling).
VIA has had a really tough time getting entry, but their products really are quite good. Admittedly, the C7 line was rather slow, but during its time, it was by far THE most power efficient and small x86 CPU.
D is for delicious!
When can I expect to slip one of these into my coat pocket?
Why is this 1.66GHz dualcore Atom so much better than the existing 330 Atom (1.66 GHZ dual core) ??
(honest question, I am not being snarky)
Is it CPU operations that will be better, or only that the GPU will not suck as badly as it has before? (but its still not going to be good)
Because the N330 is two 1.6GHz N230's stuck together and the D510 is a 1.6GHz native dual core.
I doubt there will be a massive performance boost. Atom has always been about "good enough" performance, and what was good enough a couple years ago is still good enough today
The main advantage is the lower power consumption and manufacturing costs from integrating more parts of the system. But that means we'll probably see even less diversity in product designs from manufacturers than we do today
Will Pine Trail be hyper-threaded?
Read the link. Yes it will.
Reading the comment so far (that I can see) it looks like long battery life and HD playback are prioirties.
Maybe the other story today about the ZiiLABS ZMS-08 is a better fit.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/09/ziilabs-zms-08-offers-cortex-a8-powered-full-hd-and-flash-accele/
If you break away from the X86 requirement bitter, better things are possible.
Odd pricing:
# Intel Atom N450: single-core with Hyper-Threading support, 1.66GHz, 512KB cache, x86-64, BGA437 package, $63 price-point;
# Intel Atom D510: dual-core with Hyper-Threading support, 1.66GHz, 1MB cache, x86-64, BGA437 package, $63 price-point;
Why would anyone opt for the single core, when the dual core with larger cache is the same price? Unless it is a simple typo and the prices should be $43, $53 and $63.
Because the "N" series is the mobile processors while the "D" series is the desktop processors. Mobile pocessors are generally more expensive than there desktop counterparts.
From:
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/03/atom-cant-feed-rd-monster-intel-outsources-chips-to-tsmc.ars
"The second problem with Pineview from NVIDIA's perspective is that once the GPU moves onto the (Intel-owned) CPU die, it's totally shielded from real competition. In this respect, an on-die GPU is sort of the ultimate in Intel vendor lock-in. But I do wonder if Intel's TSMC deal doesn't complicate this picture.
Intel's stated goal in porting Atom to TSMC is to let SoC customers combine their third-party IP with Atom to produce custom SoCs. What will Intel do if NVIDIA, a TSMC customer, decides that it wants to have a go at Moorestown by trying to combine an Atom core with its own graphics and I/O hardware?"
It will be interesting to see what nVidia does with Pine Trail, given their current status with Intel.
Hopefully we as consumers wont be barred from using nVidia products in next generation atom processors.
Also, has anyone seen any multimedia benchmarks for Pine Trail Atoms yet?
Meh.
I'll be picking up an Asus 1201N with an Atom 330 and Ion and calling it. Check please.
I think you need to re-think or re-write this statement.
"but techies like us are sick and tired of dabbling with the same underpowered chips and the same lackluster capabilities".
The new pine trail platform improves cost per chip and power consumption mostly. I have seen a lot of discussion how slow this platform is compared with ION with ATOM platform. For netbooks this is great because you will lower the price the netbook, but it you are looking for more power, and overall processor speed, this is not for you.
I am waiting for the CULV's to hit mass market/production and maybe come down to the $450 price point. I own the original ASUS 1000h and I love the portability and price, but I prefer more power. Even with an SSD, the netbook chipsets seems to saturate at SATA1 throughput speeds and let's not talk about FLASH playback.
The only reason to get excited is if you are looking for a cheaper netbook, otherwise, I think this is a step back!
Possibly. Flash is a resource molesting pig and Adobe should've been slapped long ago about it.
Theoretically, Flash 10 with GPU support will assist, making netbooks more viable machines for playback. As far as I'm concerned, though, a true nerd should have a netbook with Ion. GMA945/950/500 is pure trash.
You are right Justin. A new FLASH version will be enable GPU accelaration, but I don't know if or when intel GPU's will get this feature. Right now I think only Nvidia is supported.
A little off topic... Will they ever paid CULV with ION???
waiting for something like this before i jump on the hp 311.
I am also waiting for a Intel CULV and ION pairing. What I have read though is that Intel for the most part only wants to pair their lower end Mobile processors with their lower end chipsets. And the pricing tells the whole story. Like many articles have discussed, a Intel ATOM/CULV with and intel chipset is much cheaper than a standalone ATOM or CULV processors. That is why Nvidia is cost prohibitive with an Intel lower power processor. All the ION platforms carry a at least a $50 price premium. I am willing to pay, but many OEM's ODM's will only manufacture or assemble a few of these systems in comparison the INTEL proc and Intel chipset. I liek what HP is doing. AMD with ION seems like a logical step forward even though the price to power ratio is not as good as Intel.
ION2 with Intel CULV (preferably the SU7300 with ION2). I am also very curious to see SSD performance. I am also want touch screen functionality
booring.
Won't beat an CLUV Core Duo...
So why do we care?
M.
Just picked up an Asus Eee 1005HAB this morning, been beating the living snot out of it all day, throwing the craziest apps I could think of at it. First, I thought I'd do some stuff on YouTube, which it handled in stride. Next, I decided to send all of my mp3 and movie files to it, which, at 20GB, took a little while, but it did the transfer via my wireless router pretty well. I dumped MS Office and MS Works and downloaded OpenOffice, which works nicely. I then watched part of a movie, which, while the screen was slightly jumpy in fullscreen, when shrunk down just slightly, it played well enough. If I'm going to be watching movies on a computer anyways, that's why I have a really big monitor for my desktop. Downloaded Full Tilt Poker, which performed well. Then I decided to pull out the big guns and installed CakeWalk, then proceeded to record and play back multitrack audio. I set up a previous project of mine off my PC and played it back, which it did without any drama, and then added a couple tracks just to see how it would handle recording in real time. Zero latency. While I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who likes to play WarCrack, EverCrack, or any high-end games since the graphics quality isn't exactly spectacular, for anything else, and especially for the average student or businessperson, I think it performs well. Now if I could just get all these things to work under Linux, I'd be happy.....
I know about the graphics and the power consumption. I just set up a Vaio X laptop for a client and it was very sleek but too slow at 2GHz even using and SSD hard drive. Any news on faster atom procesors or 64bit Atom processors? I heard the new pine view atoms are only going to be 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz.