News - Intel's Atom between a rock and a hard place

[HEXUS]

Industry insiders say Intel is facing a dilemma about what to do with its Atom chip, needing it to become more powerful to achieve 1080p HD, but not wanting it to become powerful enough to cannibalise its higher end chip business.

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[McPhee]

I thought this was already common knowledge? It certainly sucks to be Intel. Losing business on Core2 chips is inevitable here, the only matter is who will take that slice of the market. I don't think they've got any choice but to boost the power of Atom chips.

[Jay]

They are perfect for high end routers, low end web servers etc.

[aidanjt]

Precisely. And boosting power of the Atoms is completely defeating the point of it. Atom doesn't need to be any more powerful than it already is. It just needs a good IGP (like ION) and that'll cover the heavy duty multimedia nicely. It's not as if Atom machines come with 1080p sources, or 1080p capable displays anyway.

[MadduckUK]

It's not as if Atom machines come with 1080p sources, or 1080p capable displays anyway.

you sure?

[rushholme]

Can an Atom play 720p youtube video properly?

[Jay]

my Dell mini can't

[mikerr]

Wouldn't netbooks switching to atom 330 (dual core) help?
AFAIK all use the single core 270

Intel explicitly said to its partners that it doesn’t want to see Atom 330 in any notebooks, and any attempt to launch such a machine would be heavily penalized.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/9538/35/

[oolon]

Personally I think the rise of cheap task specific devices is causing the drop in high end processor sales. I loved the fact that intel believed you need a fast processor in a fileserver... no you need great IO! With the rise of consoles for gaming (You know the hardware combination will work acceptably) and internet devices like netbooks which are fine for word processing and light surfing and many other things. People wanting a HD source buy a Bluray player, which can also handle other media or even networking these days. Many people are deciding they do not need a flexability of a high power PC. Personally, I have a core i7 and an atom machine, the atom is so low power it is always on, and as a result I use it much more, infact I am using it to post this...

[Spud1]

It's not as if Atom machines come with 1080p sources, or 1080p capable displays anyway.

Don't forget that there are many many many more uses for the atom chips than just for netbooks - much better uses also..literally thousands of embedded applications where your previous option was something like a *shudder* Via C7

A chip capable of 1080p playback would be a dream - we use atoms at the moment for some of our retail systems, but have to stick with "real" desktop chips for some applications due to their multi media needs..so we definitely have a need for a nice low power chip like this.

Intel are fully right that it would eat into their mainstream market - I think they key would be for them to keep the clock speeds low enough that people won't want to buy an atom for their machine - keep the branding strong that its a low power mobile chip not meant for desktops or for anyone after performance.