nettop

Atom - on its way to becoming a system on a chip?

There must be more nuclear physicists over at Intel than I realized; they’re splitting Atoms faster than any scientific team I know of these days. Kevin C. Tofel,  Intel’s Newest Atom CPU Is Already Splitting

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is Intel Atom.  It’s a low-power processor designed specifically for mobile devices that have Internet capabilities. It debuted back in March of 2008.

This week Intel announced Atom v2, code-named PineView.  If you listen to the blogosphere buzz, Pineview, which has a CPU, GPU and memory controller on a single die — is well on its way to becoming the holy grail for netbooks and nettops: a system on a chip. As it is, the new version of Atom moves from a three-chip design to a two-chip design, with graphics and memory controllers moving onto the processor.  The second chip, which provides I/O functions, is being called ‘Tiger Point’.  The combo (Pineview + Tiger Point) is being marketed as the “Pine Trail Platform.”