The Moorestown platform of Intel, which should serve as a basis for embedded processors in smartphones and tablets, is finally taking shape with the announcement of the Atom family Z6xx.
The Atom family of embedded processors from Intel has won a new branch with the Atom Z6xx family which corresponds to the processors for the Moorestown platform itself, which had been announced in 2008. The Atom processors have not made first from Intel to processors for mobile products like the netbooks, enabled the smelter to take advantage of the rapid growth of this market.
With Moorestown processors its more specifically towards smartphones and tablets that turns the Atom range Z6xx with power consumption greatly reduced (10 times lower than the previous Atom family) without curbing performance since it allows to decode HD video, performing multipoint videoconferencing or to easily manage multi-tasking.
The Moorestown platform is based on a SoC Lincroft Atom Z6xx (System on Chip), a controller and a circuit MP20 Langwell MSIC (Mixed Signal IC) Briertown. The SoC includes the CPU, engraved in 45nm LP high-K, an encoder/decoder and video memory controllers and display.
A platform tailored for mobile usage
Intel promises a power consumption 50 times lower operating minimum, 20 times lower in audio playback and 2-3 times lower in video playback and navigation, which would correspond to an autonomy of 10 days standby, 48 hours audio playback and 5 hours video playback.
It promises improved performance in parallel from 1.5 to 3 times, JavaScript performance more than doubled and management of 1080p HD video playback or video recording in 720p.
All of which could make the difference on a compact mobile product as a smartphone or tablet, with an emphasis on the management of energy through a system control software end of the various internal components.
Intel invites itself in the mobile market
The SoC engraved in 45nm LP Z6xx Atom processor loads 140 million transistors and manages new states (S0i1 and S0i3) at very low power consumption providing a basal level of 100 μW.
The processor can be clocked to 1.5 GHz and 1.9 GHz smartphones for the tablets and MID. It manages the WiFi and cellular connectivity (3G/HSPA, WiMAX) and various mobile operating systems such as Android, Moblin or Meego.
According to Anand Chandrasekher, Intel vice president in charge of the Ultra Mobility Group
"Intel delivers its first product in its architecture that opens the smartphone market segment. Through the platform, Moorestown, Intel extends the advantages of this architecture significantly reducing power consumption, cost and footprint to better address segments of mobile devices handheld. Thanks to our efforts, the Intel Atom pushes for power consumption very down, the limits of performance and shows what can be achieved for these devices are becoming powerful computers nomads. "
The various elements of the Moorestown platform of Intel whose processors Atom Z6xx are now available for foundry customers. With this announcement, Intel has to confront head-on ARM Holdings whose application processors using its architecture are overwhelmingly present on the market.
