Intel’s next-gen Atom ‘Pineview’ processor delayed to H1 2010?
July 21, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Intel’s Pine Trail platform that incorporates the next-generation Atom ‘Pineview’ processor may be delayed until early next year to keep manufacturers happy. According to a report from Digitimes Research senior analyst Joanne Chien, the move would be made to let the netbook market ‘settle’ following strong shipment sales.
Her analysis suggests that worldwide netbook shipments will peak in the third quarter this year at 8.3 million units before falling marginally to 8.2 million units in the fourth quarter. She says that Intel has delayed the launch of the new N450 processor to get the most out of the current N270/N280 Atom processors and help clear inventory before the new chips are introduced.
We heard recently that Intel may be showcasing some new netbooks with the N450 Atom Pineview processor at the upcoming Intel Developer Forum in September. It’s unknown whether that is still on the agenda, as it could mean that people just end up waiting for the new technology once they see what it’s capable of.
Pine Trail is a two-chip platform. The Pineview processor features a CPU, GPU and memory controller on a single die. Combining this with Intel’s Tiger Pint I/O is what makes up the Pine Trail platform. The benefits of moving from 3 chips to 2 chips is power efficiency, lower costs and better performance.
July 21st, 2009 10:56 PM
That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Why not simply release the N450 on time, and price machines that use it slightly higher until the stock of old machines is gone? Or just slightly reduce the prices of older models? Ya know, do what every other company does when new products are released! If sales are that strong, it’s not like any vendors would have a hard time clearing out old stock. And in this economy, it would make everybody happy.
August 20th, 2009 11:48 PM
That’s not very consumer friendly now is it? So we have to stick with year old processors until 2010 just because manufacturers want to milk them for all they’re worth? Well I was waiting for a spec bump before I took the netbook plunge anyway… this has just made me more determined to wait.