Published in PC Hardware

Atom leapfrogs tick tock in 2014

by on15 September 2013

Just one 22nm generation, then straight to 14nm

Two generations in 14nm, two in 10nm and so on. That’s how Intel rolls. Atom is no exception, but big changes are coming. It has been doing the same tick tock dance for quite some time and after 32nm Cedar Trail generation it came down to 22nm, with a new design codenamed Bay Trail.

Rani N. Borkar, Vice President General Manager, Intel Architecture Development Group has said Fudzilla that this is about to change. We expect to see Airmot in 2014 as the next generation Atom and this is going to be a 14nm chip. Intel didn’t want to comment on any launch schedule just that it is coming in the next year. In all goes well we expect to see it at IDF 2014, roughly a year from now. Intel plans a refreshed version of Atom in 2015, developed again in 14nm manufacturing process but with some improvements.

This is the strategy that Intel plans employ before it gets to 10 nm Atoms and beyond, making consumers get a new Atom based chip every year, or almost every year. Bay Trail Atom is now also ending up with Celeron and Pentium branding, making it harder for end users to actually keep track of different models and know what sort of CPU core they are buying.

Intel still has many ideas how to survive in the new mobile-centric world. Intel as we know it might be a thing of the past, as the chipmaker is undergoing its biggest transformation in years, perhaps even the biggest transformation in its long history.

Instead of battling with one competitor in the x86 market, it is now having to face a dozen of them, at least in phone and tablet market and Intel is slowly learning how to live with this.

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