Intel to release Atom Z2610 in Q2

Intel released details of its Medfield platform last month. It was plagued by a whole load of analytical criticism claiming Intel simply didn’t have the value for money, performance or power consumption figures required to be successful in the Smartphone market. Some more details have emerged on a new Medfield chip that is due in Q2 of this year, meaning April to July.

The Medfield based Intel Atom Z 2610 processor will be an all in one chip. The CPU as expected will be constructed on the 32nm process much like with Cedar Trail based Atoms. The Z2610 will handle the processor, graphics (SGX 540 graphics processor), video decoding and encoding units. The SGX 540 graphics processor is a third party add on for Intel, made by the PowerVR company and it is the same graphics used in the iPad, PlayBook and a whole host of other smartphones and tablets. Video encoding and decoding units will be powerful enough to handle 1080p data encoding or 1080p dual-stream decoding. The memory controller will be low power DDR2, although we can’t help but feel DDR3 would be more appropriate given the lower voltages it takes to hold itself at the same speeds as DDR2. Nothing specific is known about the CPU yet, but you can expect very low core clocks to the tune of about 1GHz.

Intel’s reference design with Atom Z2610 will work with Android 4.0, and presumably will have battery life on a par with ARM tablets and mobile devices.

Source: CPU-World