When Lenovo introduced the IdeaPad S100 netbook, the company promised it would be available with up to an Intel Atom N570 processor. That chip isn’t currently available, and I haven’t been able to get any solid information about what makes the N570 different from existing Atom chips. But it looks like we should have our answers soon. DigiTimes reports that the N570 chip should launch at the end of February.
According to the report, Lenovo, Asus, and Samsung will all introduce computers with the new chip in March.
Right now the Intel web site only shows one chip in the N500 family — the dual core 1.5GHz Intel Atom N550. It seems likely that the N570 will be a similar chip with a faster clock speed. Netbook News suggests it will run at 1.66 GHz.
Intel is expected to launch its next-generation Cedar Trail and Oak Trail chips later this year. The N570 is likely just a minor spec bump for an existing product — much as the Atom N470 was a modest update to the N450 chip last year.
Just as its successor, the N550, this too will feature dual processing cores, 1MB of Level 2 cache memory, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3 instruction and 64-bit support as well as an on-die memory controller.
The main difference between the two chips is the frequency that the N570 operates at, as the chip is expected to come clocked at 1.66GHz compared to the 1.5GHz of Intel’s current flagship Atom CPU.
However, the TDP will remain unchanged as both processors have a power draw of just 8.5W.
As it’s the case with the N550, the N570 also packs Hyper-Threading support, enabling the processor to run up to four simultaneous computing threads when the need arises.
In addition, an integrated GMA 3150 graphics unit is packed together with the GPU, its operating frequency being most probably set at 200MHz.
According to Liliputing, right after its scheduled February launch, the N570 will make its way into netbooks built by Lenovo, Asus, and Samsung.
Pricing has not been announced yet, but the Intel Atom N550 is available for $86.00 US, so expect the new CPU to be listed at just a bit more than its current N-series counterpart.
Ever since the introduction of the first Fusion APUs back at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, Intel Atom CPUs have lost many of its supporters as the industry moved towards AMD’s more powerful processors that also enclose high-performance (for netbooks) on-die graphics.
Intel is expected to counteract this move with the introduction of their Cedar Trail and Oak Trail chips which are slated to arrive later this year.