Update: Engadget confirms that this was a slip of the tongue, and not actually a netbook with a dual core CPU.

Probably not. But during a presentation at WinHEC yesterday, a presenter pulled out an Asus Eee PC S101 which he described as having 1GB of RAM, a 16GB SSD and a 1.6GHz dual core Atom processor. In other words, all the specs sound right except for that dual core bit.

Now, it’s certainly possible that Microsoft has access to some next generation technology that’s not available to the rest of us. But Intel has yet to publicly announce a dual core Atom CPU that’s small enough or which runs cool enough to run inside a netbook. The company has announced the dual core Atom 330 CPU, but it’s intended for nettops and other low cost, low power desktop computers. Not netbooks.

So I’m guessing this was just a mistake or a slip of the tongue. Because the Intel Atom N270 processor which is used in many netbooks supports hyperthreading with its single core processor, the Windows Task Manager will display it as two CPU cores. But it’s just as likely that the presenter is just so darned used to saying “dual core” before the word CPU that it slipped out.

Or maybe he knows something we don’t.

You can watch a video of the presentation at Engadget.

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4 replies on “Did Microsoft just show off an Eee PC with a dual core Atom CPU?”

  1. I was looking at some Netbooks in a Chinese computer market the other day. In broken English, the sales woman was saying ‘two cpu’. Then she showed me the system properties and sure enough it said ‘Atom N270 x 2’. After doing some research, the Hyperthreading feature was mistakenly being reported as a 2nd CPU.

    I’d love to find a Netbook with an Atom N330 processor, 12 inch screen, 2gb of RAM, a 32gb SSD drive with Ubuntu Linux. I’d gladly pay $399 for one of those. But it’s not likely to happen. Microsoft and Intel are using their anticompetitive muscle along with XP Home licensing restrictions to prevent Netbooks from reaching their full potential.

  2. A Computer Shop in the Philippines offers Atom Dual Core Compatibility options for some of their Atom based netbooks with the following statement:

    upgrade^ option: . . .ALL Asus 1000 / 1000H purchased between October 1, 2008 and December 30, 2008 is eligible for a chassis upgrade (charge is based on difference in prices between the new chassis and the original chassis) to handle New Intel® Atom™ 330 platform . . .

    https://news.softpedia.com/news/Intel-Announces-Two-Cores-in-Atom-92203.shtml

    The release of the dual-core Atom could also enable system vendors, like ASUS, MSI and Acer, to update their netbook and nettop offer with high-performance Atom 330-based products. There is also a high possibility that Dell and HP will be rolling out their Atom-powered netbooks before 2009, which could also support the new dual-core processor. On the other hand,

    e.g. https://www.pccorner.com.ph/products.do?action=showproductdetail&typeid=23&categoryid=57&productid=4455

    maybe they know something we don’t 🙂

  3. The guy fits a black sweater, jeans and short hair, trendy for a keynote, (sorry, a microsoft presentation)

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