HANDS ON GUIDE

1 - Intel's Atom

Intel's latest processor isn't a 3GHz+ behemoth but something smaller and cooler.

While the original Eee PC was Intel powered, its CPU wasn't a strong selling point. Intel were initially extremely reluctant to let on what exactly it was. Turns out the chip was a custom creation for Asus - a slow, but extremely cheap 900MHz Intel Celeron M ULV 353 in most models.

However, the success of the Eee PC meant Intel has started taking Netbooks much more seriously, and has developed a special architecture just for them - Atom.

Atom was first unveiled under the Silverthorne codename, but appeared first in a slightly different variant, known as Diamondville. These two are architecturally identical, although Silverthorne is the premium product, with a lower TDP and a higher clock frequency and price than Diamondville. Silverthorne is the more difficult to produce. From a single 300mm wafer, Intel will get more usable Diamondvilles than it would Silverthornes, thus lowering the market price. Silverthorne chips will be given Atom Z names, and Diamondville's Atom N names.

Atom CPUs are, as you'd expect from Intel, fully X86 compatible and even include support for SSE2 and SSE3 instructions. Atoms will initially be built on the 45nm manufacturing process that we first saw in the Penryn line of desktop CPUs. Smaller transistors are of more benefit to mobile chips, where power saving and less thermal output has a greater significance.

The first Atom chip to be released to the public, is the Diamondville based N270. It comes clocked at 1.6GHz, with a 533MHz FSB, and 512KB of L2 cache. As you can see from the N270's datasheet, it might only be a single-core CPU, but it supports HyperThreading. The N270 can also be passively cooled, thanks to the fact its TDP is only 2.5W.Later in the year, we can expect higher clocked and multi-core Atom CPUs.

Atom will be used in a low cost PC for education, called the Classroom PC, which will be sold in so called emerging markets. Intel has faced some criticism over this product, since it will create competition with the XO laptop, from the One Laptop Per Child Project, which was specifically developed to lower the cost of adopting computers in the third world.

For more details, see Intel's site.

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