backtop

Print E-mail del.icio.us 54 comment(s) - last by crystal clear.. on Jul 22 at 2:25 AM
Intel's CEO talks about the Atom processor

Intel's Atom processor has been labeled as the Holy Grail of small-scale mobile computing. Now, however, Intel CEO Paul Otellini has changed his tune a bit with regards to Intel's Atom processor. Otellini was asked by reporters during the company’s quarterly conference call to expound upon his thoughts on the diminutive, 45nm processor and how its place in Intel's product lineup would affect other low-end processors like the Celeron.

"We do not see [Atom] replacing Celeron," said Otellini. "If you look at the netbook products being built around Atom, they’re all lower-priced, lower features, smaller screen size notebooks aimed at first-time buyers or the second, third or fourth machine in a household. We don’t see any cannibalization."

When pressed further, Otellini went into further detail with regards to the performance of Intel's Atom processor. "[Atom] is less than a third of the performance of our Centrino (high-end mobile processor)," added Otellini. "You’re dealing with something that most of us wouldn’t use."

The company first began making rumblings about the processor at last year's IDF in San Francisco and earlier this year officially announced Silverthorne and Diamondville as the Intel Atom.

In early March -- shortly after the official announcement of Atom and Centrino Atom -- Intel Otellini hailed that the chip would help the company tap into $40 billion USD worth of new markets.

"It’s not just the 1 billion people that have access to the Internet now. It’s the next 2 billion people," said Otellini in March. "It’s not just about selling more PCs, but bringing new devices and new price points to bring those people onto the Internet. We are not talking about repurposing old silicon, but designing new silicon for each of these different areas."

It's quite puzzling that such a comment would come from Intel's CEO given the company's insistence on the importance of Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) based on the Atom platform. There's also the fact that Microsoft even opened up its arms to embrace Windows XP Home a bit longer for "netbooks" – a classification of low-cost notebooks that Intel itself coined.

Small netbooks ranging from the MSI Wind to the Eee PC 901/1000h to the Acer Aspire One all use Intel's new 1.6GHz Atom processors. Companies like Dell and HP aren't that far behind with their own Atom-based offerings at all.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
By JasonMick (blog) on 7/17/2008 2:08:02 PM , Rating: 4
It seems to me that this is wishful thinking on the part of Mr. Otellini. Small, cheap computers like the MSI Wind and EeePC have sold great and promise to do even better overseas, where users can't afford a 1,700+ fully loaded quad core gaming machine.

This is bad news for Intel, though. As I discussed in my last article on Intel, the one chink in the giant's armor is poor profit margin growth. Even if Intel sells lots of Atom processors, the price is so much below the Core 2 duo/quad core processors that they make much less profit on them.

Eventually this could become a serious threat to Intel, if most users adopt low cost processors for the majority of their computing. Intel has made a killing by making customers THINK they need a dual/quad core for mundane tasks like word processing or web surfing. There will always be a market for high powered cores, but it seems that consumers will increasingly move to cheaper, more power efficient cores; bad news for Intel.

No wonder Mr. Otellini would wishfully not want the current state of things to change...




By AssassinX on 7/17/2008 2:32:39 PM , Rating: 2
Wow I'm an idiot, I should read my own post. Please ignore what I said earlier. I just never heard of "chink in the armor". Just sounds so wrong...


By ImSpartacus on 7/17/2008 10:01:44 PM , Rating: 2
No you are very right. Many people understand (including myself) what a "chink in armor" would be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chink_(disambiguation...

quote:
A crevice or crack or other small narrow space, usually involving brick or stone and typically concerning brickwork but also in reference to stonework as well as natural rockfaces and also metalwork such as armour. "A chink in one's armour" refers to a weakness in an otherwise strong presence/defence,; often meaning a flaw in somebody's argument or organization.


By Alpha4 on 7/21/2008 5:35:11 PM , Rating: 2
That is so wrong its almost right.

For shame!


By piroroadkill on 7/17/2008 2:33:32 PM , Rating: 5
No, he means chink, chink means a small gap, "chink in their armour" is a time-old phrase, and has no racist connotations at all, quite the contrary, the racial slur chink is based upon the original meaning, due to people of east asian descent having thin narrow eye openings.. that is to say akin to the apperance of a "chink"

btw, not racist


By Brandon Hill (blog) on 7/17/2008 2:38:25 PM , Rating: 5
I already made the move.

I previously had a desktop machine with a Pentium Dual Core 2160 processor overclocked to 2.25GHz, 2GB of RAM, a 200GB HDD, and a GeForce 7300 LE graphics processor. I also had an Eee PC 4G to compliment it.

I sold the Eee PC about a month ago on eBay, and I just gave the desktop to friends who wanted a cheap desktop.

I'm now using an MSI Wind as my sole desktop/laptop machine. The Wind of course has a 1.6GHz Atom processor, 80GB HDD, and 1GB of RAM (I today cracked open the case and upgraded it to 2GB).

It works perfectly as a desktop machine. I have my 22" LCD hooked up via the VGA port, a USB keyboard plugged in, a USB hub for various other peripherals, and a 250GB external 2.5" HDD.

I'm running Windows XP Home SP3 just fine and am not really missing my old desktop. Sure, it's a tad bit slower than my old system for some tasks, but for my everyday needs, it fits perfectly.

When I need to use it as a notebook, I just unplug all the extra gear and head out. The larger keyboard (compared to my Eee PC) is a big plus and the LED-backlit screen is brilliant.

I must say, I'm very impressed so far.


By therealnickdanger on 7/17/2008 6:38:21 PM , Rating: 2
I want to be you. But seriously, I wasn't even aware the Wind was available already? That's what I've been waiting for! Time to do some shopping!


By Brandon Hill (blog) on 7/17/2008 6:45:15 PM , Rating: 3
I got mine of Mwave's eBay store for $499 - $125 (Microsoft Live cashback, see here for details on cashback -- http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=... )

Newegg had them in stock shortly, and I think some other retailers are now getting them finally.


By wrekd on 7/17/2008 11:00:14 PM , Rating: 2
Hey Brandon,

Have you by chance tested any games on it? I was wondering if the integrated graphics chip could handle WoW? I have a Mac Mini with a GMA 950 that handles it well enough, but wonder if this little beast could do it too.


By Lianna on 7/18/2008 6:34:59 AM , Rating: 2
I have MSI Wind, too, and I played Lineage II C4 and it is playable on low details and 1024x600 (full screen, native resolution). Try reading http://forums.msiwind.net/gaming/ and http://wiki.msiwind.net/index.php/Windows_Games - they have a list of tested games and a link on the bottom of the page shows video of gameplay, WoW included. Someone at http://blog.laptopmag.com/gaming-on-the-msi-wind tried City of Heroes, another MMO.


By baadcatj on 7/17/2008 10:46:17 PM , Rating: 2
When you check something on Wikipedia, double-check for disambiguation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chink_(disambiguation... - in case the meaning you found doesn't fit with the meaning of the word the author was intending, or use a dictionary or thesaurus.

....

While the Atom is not a high-end processor, by the sheer smallness in size and decent overall abilities, it definitely does have it's place.

Even reading the article that this DT article is referencing, it is unclear that the CEO is saying that Intel wouldn't use them. I'd like to hear/read the full extent of that conversation as it sounds a little out of context as the CEO does not see cannibalization of the Centrinos or Celerons and is 'enthusiastic' about the 'robust demand' for them.

Looking at the specs of the processor, my recollection is that the Pentium M that the Atom (at twice the core clock speed) beats in performance by about 20%, does so at 2-4 watts TDP while the Pentium M put out 6-25 watts.

So, what we have here is about the performance of a laptop from 2 generations ago, for a lower price, better power efficiency, smaller package size and lower TDP. The only down-side is that there doesn't seem to us that there is nearly as much of a market for them as what Intel thinks.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Will they work well in perhaps a new generation of networked-tablet PC, especially for the direction that electronic health-care records is heading. Either Intel is a little ahead of the curve (good for them), a bit behind cell-phone makers or they just came up with a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.


By baadcatj on 7/17/2008 10:59:05 PM , Rating: 2
wow - with everything going on in my house right now, it took me over an hour to post that - in that time, someone else already brought up the disambiguation - I guess I must be a lot faster next time!


By Icelight on 7/17/2008 2:33:50 PM , Rating: 1
Even with that being the case, does Intel not make the majority of sales from the business computing end of the spectrum? I doubt businesses will ever move to such machines.

Of course, there is the whole "untapped" market thing that was mentioned...but that market was described as being untapped solely due to the previous cost of computers (therefore Intel couldn't hope to sell better-"margined" systems there).


By Marlowe on 7/17/2008 9:42:13 PM , Rating: 2
This story agrees with the commentary posted on The Inquirer yesterday called "Why Intel really hates the Atom". I guess there must be something to it after all then, since both of you post about it. http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/0...

I think one of the reasons Intel "hates" the Atom is because if manufacturers and end user find that an Atom is good enough for them, then they also have the VIA cpu's competing in the same marketplace with much the same performance/wattage as the Atom. VIA can't compete with the newest 2,6 GHz Core2Duo mobile processors from Intel, but in the low-power, "low-performance" market, VIA is strong.

A bit on the side but almost in the same market you also have AMD and ARM processors, even tho the latter isn't x86 AFAIK. Also NVIDIA is currently in the works of making a CPU+GPU for this very market if I'm not mistaken.


By mmntech on 7/17/2008 2:37:25 PM , Rating: 2
Most people don't need a processor much faster than 1.6ghz for basic tasks. You don't need quad core processors to do a little internet shopping, watch Youtube videos and IM your friends, which is what most people use computers for. I've even coaxed 720p video out of my laptop which runs a 1.33ghz PowerPC G4. (Quicktime with GPU acceleration on a Radeon 9550) Even common dual core processors are more than most people need unless you do a lot of multitasking.

I don't know who he's saying doesn't want an Atom but I certainly do. I've had my eye on the Eee 1000 and the Acer Aspire One as eventual lightweight (physical and software) replacements for my iBook. I think we're eventually going to see the death of big tower desktops as the economy declines and people want cheaper, smaller alternatives. The big hurdle is clearing up all the misconceptions about computers, like your system being obsolete the second you buy it. Who cares if it is if it does what you need it too.


By Oregonian2 on 7/17/2008 2:55:48 PM ,