In Intel’s second major technology announcement in the span of a week, the chip manufacturer has revealed a refresh of its Atom processor line. Intel’s new “Silvermont” architecture promises faster speeds, lower power draw with what the company calls best in class performance plus power efficiency.
The renovation is the first Atom line using a 22nm fabrication process, with plans to migrate to 14nm with the upcoming Airmont line and a future line as yet unnamed. The company calls the Silvermont like the first in a family of yearly refreshes.
Specifics for the chip line were slim at today’s announcement, but Intel did note that the chip is aimed at a “wide range of low power products” from phones to servers. The chip line is said to have a three times greater peak performance over the previous line, or the same performance with only 20 percent of the power consumption.
Enhancements in the chip line include an Out-of-Order Execution engine, up to eight cores on one processor, new IA instructions including Core Westmere SSE4.1, SSE4.2, and AES-N. Intels’ new security and virtualization technologies are also integrated with Intel OS Guard, and support for McAfee DeepSAFE.
