If reports are correct, we might not see next-gen netbooks built around Intel’s Atom 'Pinetrail' platform until early next year...
Netbooks continue to sell at a brisk pace and things could even quicken by year’s end, bookended by the usual Christmas sales season and a new range of pint-prized portables shipping with Windows 7.
Industry insider
DigiTimes is now claiming that Intel, eager not to rain on the netbook’s parade, has opted to hold back on its updated Pinetrail platform until early 2010.
This would allow vendors to sell through their 2009 stock and then kick off 2010 with a bang, perhaps with a launch of Pineview at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2010.
Pinetrail marks a substantial leap forward for netbooks, shifting the platform to a two-chip solution similar to that of the Nehalem architecture.
The Atom ‘Pineview’ chip – a single-core N450 for netbooks and D410 for Atom-powered desktops, along with a dual-core D510 (all of which are clocked at 1.66GHz) – will integrate the processor, graphics and memory controller onto a single 45nm wafer.
That chip is paired to Intel’s NM10 Express chipset (codenamed ‘Tigerpoint’) for I/O via a point-to-point Direct Media Interface (DMI) link.
Graphics will also get a boost as the graphics engine shifts from the current 133MHz GMA950 to the 200MHz GMA500, with the option for netbook manufacturers to add an HD graphics decoder chip from Broadcom for 1080p HD video.
The two-chip design makes for substantially smaller package size and lower power consumption: the current three-chip Atom system totals 2601mm², compared to just 773mm² for Pineview-M.
The package isn’t only a third of the size, it also draws half the power: the CPU’s own drain drops from an average 4 watts to 2 watts while overall TDP (Thermal Design Power) falls from 16 watts to 7 watts. This will lead to longer battery life, an increase in fanless systems and potentially slimmer netbook designs.