Over the past few months there’s been a lot of speculation about whether Intel would manage to launch its next-generation Intel Atom chip (codenamed Pineview) by the end of the year. The latest news from the Intel Developer Forum in San Franciso is yes… kind of.

PC World reports that an Intel official is stating that Pineview chips will be in the hands of PC vendors in the fourth quarter of 2009. But it could take a few more months before we actually start to see netbooks using the next generation processors hit the streets. So while Intel is technically on track to release the chip before the end of the year, you probably won’t be able to buy a netbook with a Pineview processor until Q1 or Q2 of 2010.

The new Atom chips will be smaller and more energy efficient than the Atom N270 and N280 processors found in countless netbooks today. The new chips will also feature a system-on-a-chip design, which means that the graphics controller and CPU will be on the same chip. This should keep costs and energy consumption down, while making life a little more difficult for NVIDIA which is hoping to cash in on the netbook craze with its ION platform that bundles an Atom processor with NVIDIA graphics. If the graphics controller is on the chip, it’s going to be harder to convince PC makers to choose NVIDIA ION over integrated Intel graphics.

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8 replies on “Intel Atom Pineview chips to ship to PC vendors this year”

  1. I look forward to seeing what Pineview can do. Really, Intel is going down a smart path because they are not biting off more then they can chew or rather sell. Netbooks, UMPCs, and nettops are not meant to high end graphics or AV editing, but that Pineview should do is allow for streaming of HD content that would be found online. In that way Pineview will still be sub par for gaming and serious work, but at least will level-up to what we need from a NETbook.

    And, the nice thing about Pineview is it will sip at the pool of power. It scarifies speed, but when you see every day on nearly every gadget site people BITCHING about battery life you see how Intel will sell these chips. And that even before we start talking about Atom in cars, Atom in TVs, and Atom in toys/dolls. Fanless computer on a chip will be huge. I think two years ago not even Intel though it would be huge, but I give them credit for switching direction quickly when they saw Atom take off.

    1. I think the killer app for next year’s netbooks will be support for hardware accelerated Hulu HD and Youtube HD.. people don’t necessarily want to play games or blu-ray rips.. but they definitely want to watch youtube in hd or hulu in hd
      edit: my point being if intel pineview doesn’t have support for that, ion could be more attractive

  2. Reuben:

    “First, Intel has never made a competitive graphics processor.”

    Hmmm, last time I checked, Intel had 50% graphics market share, or nearly as much as ATI and NVIDIA combined. I guess by ‘competitive’ you mean ‘fast’, but speed does not always rule in commodity markets.

    1. @Mike_co,

      Correct, Intel does have a nice marketshare but that is only because of end users that are shopping for the best value. They never stop to realize that they cannot play modern DirectX 9+ games.

      Will the new Intel integrated graphics chips leave out FAST DirectX 9+ support in favor of slick marketing?

      The ASUS 1005HA is an example of why they cannot do this again. https://bit.ly/44CHFm

      1. Probably because they never realize that they want to play the junk games currently on the market with a 9″ display.

        Oh, wait. I think I got it backwards. They likely _do_ realize that they _do NOT_ want to play these games, either at all or on purpose-built hardware such as mini-notebooks.

        I could care less about DirectX-anything in a mini-notebook, mostly because I don’t use windows, but partially because when I do play games it isn’t going to be some high-graphical piece of crap on a power-conservative portable device.

        You would do better to complain about not being able to play games on your car’s ECU, or on your TV remote’s microcontroller, or…

  3. First, Intel has never made a competitive graphics processor. Integrating it into the new Atom processors maybe a costly mistake that takes them out of the market if they cannot stream HD video.

    My ASUS 1005HA netbook has an Intel Atom N270 with integrated video and it can barely stream low resolution Youtube content. Here is a quick benchmark analysis of the Atom N270: https://bit.ly/44CHFm

  4. “PC World reports that an Intel official is stating that Pineview chips will be in the hands of PC vendors in the fourth quarter of 2010. But it could take a few more months before we actually start to see netbooks using the next generation processors hit the streets. So while Intel is technically on track to release the chip before the end of the year, you probably won’t be able to buy a netbook with a Pineview processor until Q1 or Q2 of 2009.”
    heh?
    i think the years are switched……

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