We’ve been hearing for a while that Intel is working on a dual core Atom processor for netbooks. Now Fudzilla has a name for the chip: The Atom N550.
The Atom N550 will reportedly have a clock speed of 1.5GHz, 1MB of L2 cache, and two cores with support for hyperthreading.
Fudzilla says the TDP will be 8.5 watts, which includes the power consumption for the CPU and integrated graphics and memory controller. That’s a little more power than the Intel Atom N450 and N470 single core chips use, but that’s what you get for doubling the number of processor cores.
The new chips will reportedly hit the streets in the third quarter of 2010.
Well,
I was hoping for a significant increase in processing power. But I guess the HT would make some significance.
Anandtech benchmarks several different CPU and chipset combinations (Atom N280 + ION, Atom N450, Atom desktop dual core 330 + ION, Pentium dual core). See
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3701/acer-aspire-1410-singlecore-culv-takes-on-atom/4
As the pervormance of the N550 is probably similar to the 330, those waiting for the Atom N550 are going to be way underwhelmed.
The article’s conclusion is that the Intel Core 2 Solo CPU is a viable alternative to Atom. The article featured the Acer Aspire Timeline 1410, a very popular notebook, which has HDMI out.