Some would claim that right now the Atom chips are Intel’s main focus. And judging by what the world famous processor maker is planning, they would not be too far off in their claim.
While desktop processors have long been overlooked by Intel, it seems that notebook CPUs are also on the backburner now — tablet processors and SoC (system on a chip) units are currently taking up the company’s prime attention.
And not too long ago, people wondered if Intel would actually get into the SoC market.
But according to this new roadmap that has just leaked out, Intel is more than determined to power tablets in the next couple of years. In fact, the company plans to boost CPU processing prowess of its solutions five times by 2016, and GPU performance by as much as fifteen times.
Obviously, the company is facing intense competition by the various ARM powered chips. Plus in the graphics department, Nvidia is busy integrating its Kepler graphics which promise console quality visuals.
In terms of specifics, Intel is preparing the Cherry Trial range of Atom processors built on a 14nm manufacturing process. Next generation graphics and Airmont CPU core is expected in these chips that are set to succeed the current Bay Trial lineup in 2014.
You can read up on more details at the link above, which includes details on the dual-core Merrifield Atom chips for smartphones, followed by quad-core solutions and codenames like Sofie and Goldmont.
In one sentence, however, we can just say that things on the tablet front are heating up.
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I wish their laptop chips could get that much faster.