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A New Goldmine For Intel: The $6 Atom Processor

tomshardware.com — Intel is gearing up to launch what may be its most important product since the Pentium processor: The Atom CPU targets key growth markets and could ship hundreds of millions units within a few year. While much of the success will depend on unit numbers, sources told TG Daily that Atom will be big cash cow for Intel.

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  • Danthekilla, on 03/29/2008, -6/+29the cpu has as much power as a core 2 solo per clock and at i ghz uses only one watt of power !!
    the next version is planed to be for smart phones also
    • smacksaw, on 03/29/2008, -5/+11"i ghz"???

      Did you figure a way to adapt a manual typewriter to work on Digg.com?
    • iofthestorm, on 03/29/2008, -1/+13Uh, this is going to be far from Core 2 speeds per clock, it's an in-order processor and it's probably going to be much slower than a Core 2 Solo clock per clock. Some estimates have put the 1.6ghz version at the same speed as the 900mhz Celeron in the EeePC.
      • geminitojanus, on 03/29/2008, -0/+7The 2GHz version is roughly the speed of my old iBook's G4 on our MPEG applications benchmark, to give further comparison (this is without advanced SSE instructions). It's not that it's in-order where the performance of this chip dies. It's the fact that it's only dual-issue and the micro-coded instructions are pathetically slow. Atom's silicon is almost entirely devoted to the RISC part of its heritage which puts a pretty huge choking point on any of the higher-level instructions in the Intel ISA (most of which are likely microcoded).

        Of course, it's extremely easy these days to tune GCC to ignore less performant instructions in favor of speed, memory, and lower power, so that's exactly what Intel's playing at (hence the reason they've joined up with several Linux distributors for the MIDs, put more work into LPIA-GCC optimizations, etc). Keep in mind that these same optimizations also make your code really fly on the modern Core processors, as they apparently share a lot of hardware code between the two.

        It'll be really interesting to see what kind of adoption we'll see out of the Atom.
  • Shadowgamers, on 03/29/2008, -6/+6those OLPC dudes will be happy
    • jasdf, on 03/29/2008, -0/+5Too bad Intel dropped out of OLPC...or were you being sarcastic?
      • Kaitsu, on 03/29/2008, -1/+7They can still buy the processors from Intel I'd guess.
      • Shadowgamers, on 03/29/2008, -3/+3Super sarcastic
  • over900000, on 03/29/2008, -17/+5Suck it AMD.
    • redxxx, on 03/31/2008, -0/+1Yeah, ***** AMD! Intel doesn't need competitors.
  • Berkana, on 03/29/2008, -1/+46Remember when Intel was in trouble because AMD was well ahead in the race? I'm glad Intel didn't just keel over and fail, but a bit of competition would have been nice. What ever happened to AMD? (And Cyrix and the other chip startups?)
    • RileyKA, on 03/29/2008, -0/+8Cyrix Still Exists It is now owned by VIA. Their EPIA processors are all Cyrix (thats what the "C" in C7 stands for)
      • TimDigg, on 03/29/2008, -0/+3I own a C7...not bad...its in my mom's everex pc
    • kahrn, on 03/29/2008, -0/+4Cyrix is alive, just more focussed on the embedded market. AMD? It's just behind as of late... hopefully it'll spring back up again to give Intel some competition before it's too late.
    • aladrin, on 03/29/2008, -2/+4Actually, I -don't- remember that. I remember a lot of people -claiming- that. But I also remember a lot of people continuing to buy intel because it was proven reliable. I had enough trouble with Cyrix and early AMD chips that I swore them off many years ago. I knew I could trust an Intel chip a lot more, and stuck with them. Yes, I spent more money... But I gained the time of not having to futz around with my PC's internals all the time.

      I don't doubt AMD will pick up speed as well. They aren't anywhere close to being out of the race.
      • Aiwanei, on 03/29/2008, -0/+4back when it was athlon 64 vs p4, the athlon 64 blew the p4 out of the water in price, power consumption, and power. I had a few pc's with them and never had any reliability problems. That being said I did have a k6 burn out in like a week.
      • cougar618, on 03/29/2008, -0/+11) AMD, VIA, Intel are all reliable.... where do you get your facts from?
        1.9999999999999999999999999999999999..) Intel had its faults as well...
    • Hyperion1144, on 03/29/2008, -0/+4Cyrix and NexGen became part of AMD (they bought them out long ago). As I understand the story, way back, when the Pentium was king, the startups all tried to develop their own Pentuim-class CPUs in house. Cyrix worked on the the 6x86, Nexgen on the NX686, and AMD on the K6. In the process, they all basically decided that they couldn't do this on their own, but might be able to do it together. Cyrix and NexGen were bought out by AMD. As I recall, AMD took one look at the NX686 by the NexGen team, threw out the CPU they were working on (the K6) and just finished out the NX686 and released under the K6 name. The K6 was actually designed by NexGen. The Cyrix 6x86 was either licensed to VIA, or Cyrix was sold them outright, because after that we saw some of the Cyrix-class CPUs released to market as ultra-low cost CPUs from VIA.

      The NexGen team was, for awhile, a large contributor to AMD's success. It would appear the magic might be gone, though.

      DISCLAIMER: I just pulled that little history out of the Way Back machine in my head. If it is inaccurate, I apologize... Anybody else remember the Pentium wars shaking out like this? I am pretty sure this is right...
  • musbou, on 03/29/2008, -13/+3I don't know about you, but I'm not going to pay 30~40 bucks for a hyped up pentium 3 class processor.

    Source: http://www.computerbase.de/news/hardware/prozessor ...
    • Shadowgamers, on 03/29/2008, -2/+2Rumors on the Internet currently put the cheapest Atom CPU in a price range between $29 and $49.
      Industry sources put Atom into the range of "$6-$8"

      eh
      • CaveDog, on 03/29/2008, -0/+10the cost to make Atom is 6-8, retail is estimated at 29-49 or so.
    • LukeBeaumont, on 03/29/2008, -0/+17Except a Pentium wont fit in a phone. Silverthorne/Atom will.
    • bromac, on 03/29/2008, -0/+3The Core series is built off the Pentium 3 P6 architecture, not Netburst. Tualatin and Coppermine Pentium 3 beat Netburst-based Willamette and Northwood Pentium 4's when they first came out. If they hadn't tried to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and just continued development of Pentium 3, we'd be much further ahead.
    • tempusrob, on 03/29/2008, -0/+4The P3 was a really good architecture. Clock for clock it spanked the P4. It was the basis for the Pentium M and, to a lesser degree, the original Core architecture.
    • kahrn, on 03/29/2008, -0/+3Core, Pentium M, Atom... what do they all have in common? All based upon Pentium 3! So you'll pay $80/$100 for them but not $30/$40 on atom? Logic just got thrown out the window.
      • geminitojanus, on 03/29/2008, -0/+2Only the Atom is no Pentium; it's what happens if you take a 1996 era chip and bump its units to 2008 spec. It's essentially a Pentium with the Pentium 3's ALUs, SSE3 from the Core lineage, and the bus from Netburst; it's a *****.

        But it's a damned fast embedded processor, and that's what matters. Intel would love for Atom to become a huge hit because of the profit margins on these suckers, which is exactly what this article is pointing out. There's no room to win on the Desktop front anymore; the processors are too big, produce too much heat, and don't bring in the bacon anywhere near what the Atom can do.
  • smacksaw, on 03/29/2008, -18/+11This is clearly a huge win for Linux and a big loss for Vista. With a processor this cheap, I think we're going to see multi-core units, as well as motherboards that can take several processors. Linux will adapt quickly to support these multiprocessor systems, while you'd be able to buy 25 Atom processors for the price of the version of Windows you'd use on this.

    And you'll see the same on smaller devices. Again, I think this favours Linux.

    Microsoft has got to get their asses in gear and make an operating system that is flexible. I think the writing was on the wall with the PS3. There was a clear shift from a system with 1 super-powerful-yet-pricey-CPU to a powerful system with several CPUs that can be tasked to do different things via a flexible OS. You can see MS sort of gets it with the 360, but not completely. Not yet.

    This sort of thing is going to change the game. And where is MS going to be? If they are smart, they'll be figuring a way to put these into the next XBOX and developing a platform to utilise them.
    • alclone, on 03/29/2008, -0/+4Umm... care to elaborate more? I still fail to see a connection.
    • pathy, on 03/29/2008, -1/+2What?

      Linux, Windows and OS X already support multiple processors. They also all have mobile/smaller variants. (Well, OS X's is on the iPhone, and I don't know a lot about it truth be told.)

      Microsoft have flexible versions of Windows, they're trailored to specific devices.

      And the PS3 only has ONE CPU, just like the 360. One physical chip.
    • Skorp, on 03/29/2008, -1/+1I'm not gonna dignify this with an actual argument. Instead, have some numbers.

      You can run windows on an eight to sixteen core PC and load them to the gills. New versions of Windows XP SP2 support NUMA, opening the door to big Opteron multi-socket systems, and later, Nehalem-based Xeon systems. It will support as many cores as you can throw at it.

      The Xbox 360 has a triple-core PowerPC CPU. Each core has a form of SMT enabled, letting you run two threads on each (think Hyperthreading). If it matters to you, pretty much all 360 games make good use of these cores, which is demonstrated well on the PC ports.

      The PS3 has one full PowerPC core, and seven programmable SPEs. These can't run your usual code, think of them more as SSE units, or things you find in a graphics card.

      People have been running dual-socket Windows systems since the dawn of time, with Pentium IIIs and Windows 98.
      • heinousjay, on 03/29/2008, -0/+2The dawn of time was in the 90s? Then why the hell do I feel so old?
  • jasdf, on 03/29/2008, -9/+3I plan on buying ~500 shares of Intel.
    /disclose personal financial idea
    • iofthestorm, on 03/29/2008, -2/+14I plan on burying you.
      /disclose personal burying idea
  • PueSi, on 03/29/2008, -1/+19VIA is going to be *****!.
    This is a market I'm interested, one of those chips would be perfect for a Bittorrent24/7+Multimedia server, using a 200W+ computer just for torrents feels stupid.
    • joesmeat, on 03/29/2008, -0/+1My Nokia N800 runs transmission, so does my mums Western Digital Mybook 500GB (with clutch web interface.)
      My D-Link DNS-323 runs MLDonkey with a bittorrent client.
      The NAS's also run Upnp servers for multimedia.
      If you really want a low-power torrent + media server there are lots of options.
  • augenblick2007, on 03/29/2008, -2/+3Didn't Intel have very low priced celeron processors (less than $100) in the early days of celeron as well? I know this Atom thing is a bit superior now but still, they had such low priced CPUs in the past.
    • alclone, on 03/29/2008, -1/+5Celeron was the "crap" kind of CPU. Atom however looks very promising and not "crap"
      • geminitojanus, on 03/29/2008, -0/+2Except your modern Celeron will be roughly twice the speed of Atom, clock for clock.
    • libkarl2, on 03/29/2008, -3/+1I think your right, but I can't recall exactly when. I think what makes the Atom special is as much the 'timing' of it's release; the handheld/mobile/embedded market is exploding, like the PC market did in the 90s, only bigger. It's processing power, combined with it's low cost and low power draw make it a safe bet, When Motorola released their Dragonball line, the market was growing, but had not really achieved the velocity it has now.
    • daza, on 03/29/2008, -1/+7Older Celeron's (circa 300MHz) era were underclocked Pentium II's that couldn't make the grade for whatever reasons. Either underclocked or had some pipelines, cache or extensions disabled for stability reasons. It was Intel's way of saving usually binned processors.

      Nowadays, Celeron processors aren't all that bad, in fact they do quite well at handling most tasks especially in cheap notebooks. Atom is the new entry level processor going to be used in portable and lower power devices.
  • bluemist, on 03/29/2008, -1/+6I have a D201GLY, a desktop board which is a mini-ITX (smaller than micro-ATX) mobo with a "built-in" (Yonah) Celeron 1.33GHz. It is good enough for it's purpose as my personal home server, but this is really a powerful computer for basic office work, web surfing, and even standard-def HTPC function. All this for just 60$, and I literally made that server pc for less than 150$.

    Not only that, its TDP is only 27W which is the lowest of any non-VIA cpu (expensive stuff). With Atom coming the power savings will become more substantial. With low power, low price, and performance 'good enough' for non-enthusiasts I really think they have a winner here.
  • alclone, on 03/29/2008, -5/+10I'm no fanboy or anything, but unless AMD comes out with something better, AMD is done for. The only reason why they hang around now is because of the fanboys.
    • daza, on 03/29/2008, -1/+3AMD are definitely in some trouble at the moment, and while I don't think they'll be in any *serious* trouble soon - they're edging closer towards it. They really over-paid with the ATi aquisition and considering that their video cards haven't had much success against nVIDIA they definitely seem to be struggling a bit. Hector is on the chopping block from what I've read, so maybe a reshape will do them some good.
    • geminitojanus, on 03/29/2008, -0/+3AMD doesn't compete in this market at all (they've had Geode, but it's been due for a refresh for years now and it's not received it). The ARM manufacturers, however, shat themselves when they saw Atom. And rightfully so, because Atom could replace the top-end ARMs everywhere those chips are appropriate.

      Of course, the ARMs still perform better than Atom will likely ever, but Intel's got the money to market it, they've got Apple to sell them, and they've got plenty of room to get into a price-war with the whole rest of the industry.
    • carlosos, on 03/29/2008, -0/+2I actually see VIA more in trouble since this chip would take away from VIA's CPU market more than it would affect AMD. Does AMD even have a CPU in that market? (AMD Geode maybe but I haven't seen an UMPC with that chip)
  • insanebrain, on 03/29/2008, -12/+8whow. . a processor for only 1 euro. . .that's cheap.
    • Puppyfam, on 03/29/2008, -1/+4The dollar hasn't dropped that low... Yet. Google says $6 is about €3.80. Of course, that's just the cost to manufacture them; retail price includes considerable markups.
  • Ell3, on 03/29/2008, -2/+4Notice how some of the key metrics that would determine the usefulness of the processor are mysteriously missing from the article, as are the metrics on the key cost drivers. How many I/O? How large is the instruction set? How much on-board cache memory? So what if the processor is dirt cheap if you have to spend $100 on support chips. Powerful inexpensive processors for the embedded market are a dime a dozen, is that where they're headed with this? Is this the ARM IP that Intel purchased?
    • init100, on 03/29/2008, -0/+1"How large is the instruction set?"

      x86 + x86-64
  • LOVEANDEQUALITY, on 03/29/2008, -5/+0i want my macbook to run this!
  • binaryloop, on 03/29/2008, -2/+1Someone out there needs to find a BOM (bill of materials) sheet for some of these laptop parts and post it online... find out how much this ***** REALLY costs! We're all sick of paying $120 for a $6 chip. I bet half the laptops that are being pumped out cost about $100 in parts to make. Meanwhile Dell charges $799 for them. So... any Diggers out there work in a Chinese laptop factory? (Or have access to a BOM)?
    • daverave999, on 04/03/2008, -0/+1Yeah, cos research and development are FREEEEEEEE!
  • bdbr, on 03/29/2008, -0/+2You guys discussing laptops might want to read the last paragraph. This isn't designed to necessarily have the horsepower for a full-featured laptop. Its a small, low-cost, low-power CPU for MIDs and UMPCs.
  • HydrogenY, on 03/29/2008, -0/+1Their burning question was how profitable it would be? I think everyone reading the article's burning question was how fast the chip is.
  • toomanymirrors, on 03/29/2008, -2/+1Up to 1.8GHz according to the press release:
    "The chips have a thermal design power (TDP) specification in 0.6-2.5 watt range and scale to 1.8GHz speeds depending on customer need. By comparison, today's mainstream mobile Core 2 Duo processors have a TDP in the 35-watt range."
    http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20 ...
  • djk21108, on 03/30/2008, -0/+1So,out of curiosity, how much does a decent dual core laptop processor cost intel?
  •  

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