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Intel details Z3000 Bay Trail chips for tablets and hybrids, claims up to 2x CPU and 3x GPU performance
Intel barely existed on the mobile scene two years ago, and yet the company's Clover Trail chips for low-power tablets and hybrids have already had a huge impact on the Windows PC market -- not least by rendering Windows for ARM (aka Windows RT) largely redundant. But Clover Trail's performance in devices like the Acer Iconia W3 or Lenovo IdeaTab Lynx is far from perfect, especially with Windows 8 desktop applications and anything that involves 3D graphics, and that's why we're more than ready for its successor: Bay Trail, which is based on the next-generation 22nm Silvermont architecture. Intel has today detailed three families of Bay Trail chips, the most interesting of which is undoubtedly the Z3000-series for tablet form factors, and you can catch up on these new SoCs right after the break.
Intel to launch Celeron and Pentium chips based on Atom architecture
In recent years, Intel's Celeron and Pentium processors have been cut-down versions of more advanced counterparts. For the chips' next updates, Intel is taking an opposite tack -- it's bringing low-end Atom architecture into the big leagues. The company is confident enough in the speed and flexibility of the Bay Trail-based Atom platform that it's launching desktop and laptop versions (Bay Trail-D and Bay Trail-M) under the Celeron and Pentium badges. There isn't much more to share regarding the CPUs beyond their expected releases late in the year, although there's a good chance that we'll learn more at Computex next week.
Intel Silvermont: next-gen mobile CPU's three times as fast and more energy efficient
ARM's long been the dominant form of silicon in mobile devices, but Intel aims to change that with its next-generation Atom chip design codenamed Silvermont. According to Intel, the new architecture will enable CPUs that operate at up to three times the speed of existing models, while (in some cases) also offering chips that sip just one-fifth the amount of electricity to get computational jobs done. The keys to those improvements are Intel's 22nm process and Tri-Gate transistors tuned for SoCs. While Silvermont was designed with mobile in mind, the architecture supports up to eight cores and will find its way into data centers and Ultrabooks in addition to phones and tablets. When? Intel's not telling yet, but rest assured when Silvermont shows up in an actual product, we'll be there to put it through its paces.
Intel introduces next-gen Xeon E7, E5 and E3 families for enterprise space
Truth be told, not much has been announced on the consumer end at IDF Beijing earlier today, but Intel did tease us with upcoming refreshes of its Xeon E7, E5 and E3 families for the enterprise space. In chronological order we have the Haswell-based E3 with TDP as low as 13W, and it's coming in mid-2013. This is followed by the "Ivy Bridge-EP" E5 in Q3 and then the "Ivy Bridge-EX" E7 series in Q4, the latter of which boasting three times the memory capacity of its predecessor, along with Intel's Run Sure reliability feature. More details in the press release after the break if you're into these flavors of chips. Also mentioned at the keynote were the now-available Atom S12x9 family for storage systems, as well as a couple of upcoming 22nm 64-bit Atom SoCs codenamed "Avoton" and "Rangeley," both of which are sampling now and are expected to launch in the second half of this year. We've actually already heard of the microserver-friendly Avoton from Facebook's Open Compute Project, whereas Rangeley for network infrastructures was also detailed around the same time; so again, hit up the press release for more details. %Gallery-185168%
Next-next-gen Atom will be a system on a chip called 'Silvermont,' pack 3D transistors?
Last week, we were treated to an earful about Intel's plans for its future chips -- most notably, that it's committing to 3D transistors across the board. Well, that trickle of information hasn't run dry just yet -- today's tidbit gives us a peek not into the next-generation of Atom, but the one already in the works to come after that. The new processor, codenamed "Silvermont," will be a system-on-a-chip and is reportedly slated to ship sometime in 2013. CNET also cites unnamed sources who claim that it will be designed specifically to take advantage of Intel's 22nm technology and 3D transistors. As it stands, though, they boost the cost of wafers by two to three percent, so here's hoping that premium comes down before the netbooks of the future hit the market -- if we have netbooks in the future.
