More details have emerged about Intel's second generation of Atom processor platform; Pine Trail. According to Intel, they will be smaller, more power efficient and cheaper to produce than current processors. According to Fudzilla, the Pine Trail-M mobile chips will deliver a roughly 20-percent reduction in power consumption, when compared with the current Atom CPUs (measured in Mobile Mark 05). Intel is all set to introduce this platform in the first quarter of 2010.
With just two separate chips on-die (CPU and Southbridge) the Pine Trail-M processors will have a 64-percent smaller footprint, also owing that to new manufacturing processes. Fudzilla also reported that a four-layer PCB is used, which also helped to lower manufacturing costs. Fudzilla are predicting that netbooks using Pine Trail-M chips will be roughly the same price as existing-gen models, rather than cheaper, with the lower production costs offsetting the higher specifications.
