Intel Atom

Intel Atom

Produced	2008–present
Common manufacturer(s)	Intel
Max. CPU clock	800 MHz to 2 GHz
FSB speeds	400 MHz to 667 MHz
Min. feature size	45nm
Instruction set	MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, x86, x86-64 (not for the N and Z series)
Cores	1, 2
Package(s)	441-ball µFCBGA
Core name(s)	Silverthorne Diamondville

Intel Atom is the brand name for a line of ultra-low-voltage x86 and x86-64 CPUs (or microprocessors) from Intel, designed in 45 nm CMOS and used mainly in Netbooks, Nettops, and MIDs. The Atom Z series is code-named Silverthorne and the Atom N series is code-named Diamondville. As of June 2009, the most used chips in the Netbook retail market are Z520, Z530, and N270.^{[citation needed]}

Background

Prior to the Silverthorne announcement, outside sources had speculated that Atom would compete with AMD's Geode system-on-a-chip processors, used by the One Laptop per Child project, and other cost- and power-sensitive applications for x86 processors. However, Intel revealed on October 15, 2007^[1] that it was developing another new mobile processor, codenamed Diamondville, for OLPC-type devices.

"Atom" was the name under which Silverthorne would be sold, while the supporting chipset formerly code-named Menlow was called Centrino Atom.^[2] Intel's initial Atom press release only briefly discussed "Diamondville" and implied that it too would be named "Atom"^[3], strengthening speculation that Diamondville is simply a lower-cost, higher-yielding version of Silverthorne with slightly higher TDPs at slightly lower clock speeds.^[4]

At Spring Intel Developer Forum (IDF) 2008 in Shanghai, Intel officially announced that Silverthorne and Diamondville are based on the same microarchitecture. Silverthorne would be called the Atom Z series and Diamondville would be called the Atom N series. The more expensive lower-power Silverthorne parts will be used in Intel Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) whereas Diamondville will be used in low-cost desktop and notebooks. Several Mini-ITX motherboard samples have also been revealed.^[5] Intel and Lenovo also jointly announced an Atom powered MID called the IdeaPad U8.^[6] The IdeaPad U8 weighs 280 g and has a 4.8 in (12 cm) touchscreen providing better portability than a netbook PC and easier Internet viewing than a mobile phone or PDA.

In April 2008, a MID development kit was announced by Sophia Systems^[7] and the first board called CoreExpress®-ECO was revealed by a German company LiPPERT Embedded Computers, GmbH.^[8][9] Intel offers Atom based motherboards.^[10][11]

Availability

Atom processors became available to system manufacturers in 2008. Because they are soldered, like northbridges and southbridges, onto a mainboard, Atom processors are not available to home users or system builders as separate processors, although they may be obtained preinstalled on some ITX motherboards. The Diamondville Atom is used in the HP Mini Series,aigo MID Asus N10, Lenovo IdeaPad S10, Acer Aspire One & Packard Bell's "dot" (ZG5), recent ASUS Eee PC systems, AMtek Elego, Dell Inspiron Mini Series, Gigabyte M912, LG X Series, Samsung NC10, Sylvania g Netbook Meso, Toshiba NB series (100, 200, 205), MSI Wind PC netbooks, RedFox Wizbook 1020i, Zenith Z-Book, a range of Aleutia desktops, and the Archos 10.

Architecture

Intel Atom can execute up to two instructions per cycle. The performance of a single core Atom is equal to around half that offered by an equivalent Celeron. For example, the Atom N270 found in many netbooks such as the Eee PC can deliver around 3300 MIPS and 2.1 GFLOPS in standard benchmarks,^[12] compared to 7400 MIPS and 3.9 GFLOPS for the similarly clocked (1.73 GHz) Pentium M 740.^[13] Atom implements the x86 (IA-32) instruction set; x86-64 is so far only activated for the Atom 230 and 330 desktop models. N and Z series Atom models cannot run x86-64 code.^[14] Like many other x86 microprocessors, it translates x86-instructions into simpler internal operations (micro-ops) prior to execution. The majority of instructions produce one micro-op when translated, with around 4% producing multiple micro-ops. The number of instructions that produce more than one micro-op is significantly fewer than the P6 and NetBurst microarchitectures. In the Atom, internal μ-ops can contain both a memory load and a memory store in connection with an ALU operation, thus being more similar to the x86 level and more powerful than the μ-ops used in previous designs.^[15] This enables relatively good performance with only two integer ALUs, and without any instruction reordering, speculative execution, or register renaming. Atom therefore represents a partial revival of the principles used in earlier Intel designs such as Intel P5 and the i486, with the sole purpose of enhancing the performance per watt ratio. However, Hyper-Threading is implemented as an easy (i.e. low power) way to employ both pipelines efficiently by avoiding the typical single thread dependencies.^[15]

Intel Atom processor family
Previous logo	Current logo	Code-name	Series	Core	TDP	HT	x86-64	Intel VT	Release date	Remarks
		MID / Ultra-Mobile PC
		Silverthorne	Atom Z	single (45 nm)	0.65~2 W	No	No	No	April 2008	Silverthorne can be part of Centrino Atom which was discontinued in Q3 2008
					2~2.4 W	Yes		Yes
		Classmate PC / Netbook / Nettop
		Diamondville	Atom N	single (45 nm)	2.5 W	Yes	No	No	June 2008	Netbooks are low-cost laptops
			Atom 200		4 W		Yes			Nettops are low-cost desktops
			Atom 300	dual (45 nm)	8 W				September 2008
List of Intel Atom microprocessors

Atom Z series

Computer Module based on Intel Atom Z5xx with US15W System Controller Hub

On March 2, 2008, Intel announced a new single-core processor (code-named Silverthorne) to be used in ultra-mobile PCs/Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) which will supersede Intel A100. The processor is a 47 million transistor, 25 mm², sub-3 W IA processor which allows ~2500 chips to fit on a single 300 mm diameter wafer, allowing for extremely economical production.

An Atom Z500 processor's dual-thread performance is equivalent to its predecessor Intel A110, but should outperform it on applications that can leverage simultaneous multithreading and SSE3.^[16] They run from 0.8 to 2.0 GHz and have between 0.65 and 2.4 W TDP rating respectively that can dip down to 0.01 W^[17] when idle. It features a 2-issue simultaneous multithreading, 16 stage in-order pipeline with 32 KB instruction L1 and 24 KB data L1 caches, integer and floating point execution units, x86 front end, a 512 KB L2 cache and data transferred at 533 MHz on the front-side bus. The design is manufactured in 9M 45 nm high-k metal-gate CMOS and housed in a 441-ball µFCBGA package.^[18][19]

Atom N series

The Intel Atom N270

On March 2, 2008, Intel announced a low-cost mobile processor (code-named Diamondville) to be used in the Classmate PC Netbook. It is used in Intel's low-cost Mini-ITX motherboards (code-named "Little Falls") and in a number of netbooks.^{[20][21][22][23]} It will supersede Conroe L as the N270 (2.5 W TDP) for netbooks and as 230 (4 W TDP) for nettops, each running at 1.6 GHz core speed (both N270 & 230 are single core)^[24][25] with a 533 MHz FSB speed. An N280 with a 1.66 GHz clockspeed and a 667 MHz FSB has since appeared. Both the Atom N270 and Atom N280 are single core processors which support Intel Hyper-Threading Technology.

Atom 300 series

On September 22, 2008, Intel announced a new dual-core processor (unofficially code-named Dual Diamondville) branded Atom 330 of the Atom 300 series to be used in desktop computers. It runs at a 1.6 GHz clock speed and has an FSB running at 533 MHz. The processor has an 8 W TDP rating. Its dual core comprises two Diamondville dies next to each other on a single package (substrate). Atom 330 supports 64 bit instructions.

During 2009, Nvidia used the Atom 300 and their GeForce 9400M chipset on a mini-ITX form factor motherboard for their Ion platform.

Power requirements

The relatively power efficient Atom CPU is often used with a cheaper, more power consuming chipset like the Intel 945G

While the Atom processor itself is relatively more power efficient for an x86 microprocessor, many chipsets commonly used with it dissipate significantly more power. For example while the N270 chip itself commonly used in netbooks has a net maximum TDP of 2.5 W, the Intel Atom platform with the 945GSE Express chipset has a specified maximum TDP of 11.8 W, with the processor only making up a relatively small portion of the total power. Individual figures are 2.5 W for the N270 processor, 6 W for the 945GSE chipset and 3.3 W for the 82801GBM I/O controller.^{[26][27][28][29]} Intel also provides the Intel System Controller Hub US15W chipset with a combined TDP of less than 5 W together with the Atom processor Z5xx (Silverthorne) series, to be used in ultra-mobile PCs/Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs).^[30]

Initially, all Atom motherboards on the consumer market featured the Intel 945GC chipset, which uses 22 watts alone. As of early 2009, only a few manufacturers are offering lower power 945GSE-based motherboards to end users, paired with the Atom N270 or N280 CPU.

Future

The next generation of the Atom is codenamed "Pineview" which utilizes the "Lincroft" system-on-a-chip architecture and is used in the "Pine Trail" platform. Planned to be announced Dec 21, 2009 and available Jan 4.^[31] It will be used in netbook/nettop systems, and feature a system-on-chip (SOC) with an integrated single-channel DDR2 memory controller and an integrated graphics core. It will feature hyper-threading, and is to be manufactured on a 45 nm^[32] or 32 nm^[33] process. The new system-on-a-chip design will use half the power of the older Menlow platform. This reduced overall power consumption and size will make the platform more desirable for use in smartphones and other mobile internet devices.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini has stated that, along with other improvements, Atom (specifically Silverthorne) will shrink to the 32 nm process in 2009.^[34] It has been suggested that the Atom will be the first Intel chip to transition to 32 nm due to its small size and low complexity.^[35]

The next generation platform for the netbook version of the Intel Atom is codenamed Pine Trail, which utilizes an Atom processor codenamed "Pineview" and a chipset codenamed "Tiger Point". The graphics and memory controller move into the processor, which will be paired with the Tiger Point chipset. This creates a 2 chip platform rather than the 3 chip one currently used with existing Atom chipsets.^[36]

Discontinuation

Intel has planned to discontinue some Atom models when releasing 32 nm processors.^{[citation needed]}

Collaboration with TSMC

In March 2009, Intel announced that they will be collaborating with TSMC for the production of the Atom processors.^[37]

Competition

Embedded processors based on the ARM version 7 instruction set architecture (such as TI's OMAP 3 series based on the Cortex-A8 processor, the Freescale i.MX51 also based on the Cortex-A8, the Qualcomm Snapdragon based on a custom ARMv7 implementation, or the Nvidia Tegra) offer similar performance to the low end Atom chipsets but at roughly one quarter the power consumption, and (like most ARM systems) is a single integrated system on a chip, rather than a two chip solution like the current Atom line. Although the next-generation Atom codenamed "Pineview" should greatly increase its competitiveness in performance/watt, ARM plans to counter the threat with the multi-core capable Cortex-A9 processor.

The Nano series from VIA is slightly above the average thermal envelope of the Atom, but has hardware AES support, out-of-order execution for the Nano (C7 is an in-order architecture), and hardware random number generators. Performance comparisons of the Intel Atom against the Via Nano come to simple conclusions. In general terms a single core Intel Atom is outperformed by the Via Nano which is in turn outperformed by a dual core Intel Atom 330 in tests where the second core is used.^{[38][39][40][41][42][43][44]}

See also

• List of Intel Atom microprocessors

References

Press

• "Intel cranks 45nm ultramobile CPU". EE Times. 2007-04-18. http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199100535. Retrieved 2007-10-28. 
• "Intel reaches back in time for its ultralow power chips". 2008-01-28. http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9859616-7.html. Retrieved 2008-01-29. 
• "New Intel Centrino Atom Processor Technology Ushers in 'Best Internet Experience in Your Pocket'". 2008-04-02. http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20080401comp.htm. 
• Intel to launch 3 new Atom CPUs
• "Intel's Atom Architecture: The Journey Begins". 2008-04-02. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3276. 
• "The Battle of Low-Power Processors: Best Choice for a Nettop". 2008-09-27. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/intelatom-vianano.html. 
• linuxdevices.com - Intel announces first Atom chips
• hardwaresecrets.com - Inside Atom Architecture
• computermonger.com - Intel Atom N280 vs N270 Benchmarked

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Intel Atom

• Intel - Intel Atom Processor Overview
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