New Intel Atom Pineview/Pinetrail slaps Nvidia

Intel's launched its new Atom platform for netbooks and small desktops. The new N450, D510, and D410 'Pineview' CPUs and 'Pinetrail' NM10 chipset should bring smaller devices and better battery life. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers spy a slap in the face to Nvidia.

By Richi Jennings. December 21, 2009.
(INTC) (NVDA)

Your humble blogwatcher selected these bloggy morsels for your enjoyment. Not to mention always in the season...
 
 
What's up? Dan Nosowitz knows:

Intel revealed its new line of Atom processors today. ... [Offering] a smaller footprint, better efficiency, and not a lot more power. ... they've integrated the graphics and memory controller into the processor. ... the usual improvements in efficiency and size.
...
But there hasn't been much change in the base power of the chips ... [and] the 2GB memory ceiling is still in effect. ... Intel will announce final pricing and availability information at CES.

Jon 'Hannibal' Stokes either finds a way, or makes one:

Intel's ... forthcoming Atom ... [is the] next big development in PC system architecture ... when the GPU makes the jump onto the CPU die. ... N450 is aimed at netbooks ... D510 and D410 are aimed at "entry-level desktops" ... what Intel used to call "nettops".
...
[This] sounds the death knell for NVIDIA's Ion platform in netbooks; what's the point of buying an Atom CPU + NVIDIA GPU combo if the Atom CPU already comes with an integrated GPU?

Dean Takahashi ventures forth:

For consumers, this means that netbooks won’t be so brain dead ... [but will have] longer battery lives and faster processing power. ... Since June 2008, Intel has shipped more than 40 million Atom processors for netbooks. ... Intel isn’t taking its foot off the pedal. And both Nvidia and AMD have to answer with their own solutions, and do it soon.

Dave Altavilla and Marco Chiappetta are impressed:

Let's get these code names straight ... the platform is "Pinetrail" and the processor itself is "Pineview". ... [The] on-chip memory controller ... will offer lower latency characteristics versus the northbridge implementation of old. ... What's perhaps most impressive is that the entire line of processors runs in a thermal design power rating of 5.5W to a max of 13 Watts.
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We took a closer look at the Atom N450. ... In an idle state, the processor drops down to a 6X multiplier with a resultant core speed of 1GHz. [It] has 56K total of instruction and data L1 cache with 512K of L2 cache.

Rik Myslewski unpicks the PR strategy:

By making its Atom announcements at the beginning of Christmas week, Intel has apparently chosen to reserve the CES spotlight for ... its Core i3/5/7 processor line, including the new 32nm Arrandale mobile and Clarkdale desktop parts.

But Ryan Shrout sees some drawbacks:

They don't offer any HD video decode acceleration ... and also don't do any sort of Adobe Flash acceleration - both of which could be accomplished by the NVIDIA ION chipset. ... [But] NVIDIA does not have the license to create chipsets around the DMI bus. ... The oft-discussed ION 2 will be a discrete graphics solution only for exactly this reason - it can use the PCI Express lanes ... to interface with the platform.

To which, dagamer34 exclaims, "Ugh":

It's pretty sad to see that Intel is muscling nVidia out of this market, when it's clear that a better product exists.
...
At first, I thought nVidia's CEO was blowing a bunch of hot air about Intel playing hardball, but it's pretty obvious that something is wrong with this picture here. If Microsoft got smacked down for bundling in 1998, I don't see how bundling the CPU and GPU into one chip and then locking other hardware vendors out with expensive contracts is any different.

So what's your take?
Get involved: leave a comment.
 
 
And finally...

• Pomplamoose - Always in the Season

 

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him as @richi on Twitter, or richij on FriendFeed, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itblogwatch@richij.com.

 
 
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