Intel announces Atom X3 SoFIA, its new best bet for smartphone relevance - thillsithems

Intel executives have conceded that they still haven't caught up with Qualcomm in designing processors for smartphones and tablets. But with new "Bulgarian capita" Atom X3 systems-along-a-chip (SoCs), along with the new "Ruby Trail" Mote X5 and X7, Intel's getting closer.

Although totally three products parcel the Atom name, they very represent deuce different product families. Intel's Spec X3 is Intel's best hope for the smartphone market, as the SoC contains an integrated 3G radio along with an application central processing unit. Both the X5 and X7 are more conventional Atom processors, deficiency an integrated radio, and will appear in larger, much powerful tablets.

While Intel is dying to discuss the performance of the new chips, there are still significant questions concerning how customers bequeath assume them. Intel declined to discuss the Atom X3's power consumption, but said the chip will ship into the cheapest of smartphones.

As for the new 14-nm "Cherry Track" Atom X5 and Atom X7 chips, they'll consume roughly the same amount of power as their "Bay Trail" predecessors—which were manufactured in an older, fewer efficient 22-nm process.

dellvenue8 7000realsense — Tablets the like this Dingle Locale 8 (or its heir) would be ideal for Intel's new Atom chips.

Intel executives rung to reporters ahead of Mobile Existence Congress in Barcelona, perhaps the most important smartphone render in the world.

"It utilised to be phones were exclusively some vocalization, and a immature bit of data," said Aicha Evans, vice president and general manager of Intel's Platform Engine room Group. "At once…it's about voice, the tv camera of option…and uploading and downloading photos to many of their friends. For many around the humanity, with emergent economies, these are the first devices that allow people to get on the Internet."

Why this matters: Theoretically, Intel's Atom chips don't take care each that efficacious compared to what Qualcomm's shipping. Qualcomm is still generations ahead, although Intel's Sofia chip is the first to integrate a 3G radio and an integrated central processing unit, which are tabular array stakes for the smartphone securities industry. "They're still setting the pace," Evans aforesaid of Qualcomm. "I am happy they'Re none longer years ahead of United States; we're now talk months."

Still, Intel's playing the long game. The society can open to bide its time and fine-tune its products to what its customers want, allowing the continuing succeeder of its enterprise division to fund innovation.

Atom X3 testament target entry-level phones

Intel says that its Atom X3 3G chips will ship into phones merchandising for less than $75 (think emerging markets), while its more powerful versions volition appear in the "value" phone segment, at up to $200 in retail pricing. Intel called some partners that are working with the Atom X3: In any case Asus, mostly all of them are smaller companies or freehanded device makers for other companies, such As ECS, Pegatron, Compal, and Wistron. Lenovo, which designed an earlier phone around Intel's chips, is missing from Intel's line-up.

lenovo k900 Intel — The Lenovo K900, planned around an earlier Intel Atom chip.

Intel's Atom X3-C3130 potato chip, originally write in code-titled SoFIA, will be available as ternion products: the early, integrated with a 3G radio, has begun shipping, Herbert McLean Evans said. A 2nd, slimly more powerful version (besides known as the 3G-R or X3-C3230RK), testament be made away Intel's licensing partner, Rockchip, and is owed later in the first half.

To equal truly competitive with Qualcomm and others, however, Intel needs to combine the Atom flake with an LTE radio. That X3-C3440 chip is owing in the second fractional, Evans said. (It's worth noting that Intel head executive Brian Krzanich same last September that the LTE splintering would ship in the first half of 2022.)

Although the 3G and 3G-R chips wish only support Mechanical man, the LTE chip, timed to cooccur with with the free of Windows 10, will support Windows 10 phones as well, Herbert McLean Evans said.

intel atom x3 breakdown — How Intel's new Atom X3 surgery "Sofia" buffalo chip breaks down.

In 2022, Intel was faced with the daunting task of trying to get market share in the pad of paper market, setting a goal of selling chips into 40 million tablets. Intel accomplished that tax, but essentially bought its way into the market, using a technique it euphemistically called "contra revenue" to pay tablet makers to use its chips. In September, Intel United States President Brian Krzanich said that the company has mark a numerical smartphone target for 2022, merely "would really like to avoid" using contra revenue to achieve it.

Evans confirmed that, saying that contra revenue was originally a "very calculated move" to enter the market. Intel is trying to move beyond that, "trying to get to a point where we don't have to automatically extend contra revenue to offset some of the [bill of materials] costs that we have," she said. But, she added, contra revenue might still be used in small amounts.

intel atom x3 benchmarks — Intel's Atom X3 benchmarks anticipate great things against Qualcomm's current chips.

Carrying into action, however, is where Intel hopes its new chips will shine. Intel's own estimates allege that the Atom X3 3G should personify 1.5 times quicker than the Qualcomm MSM8212 in damage of the MobileXPRT benchmark, measuring light media redaction like applying filters. The 3G-R version should bump that to 1.8 times the Qualcomm chip, the fellowship said.

Likewise, the new Atom X5 and X7 should pass substantial performance benefits. The Atom X7, for example, should embody double every bit powerful as the prior "Bay Track" in the GFXBench T-Rex HD (offscreen) benchmark, and 50 percent faster in the 3DMark Ice Storm bench mark, Intel same. Again, however, Evans declined to release some power metrics for the two new chips.

Particle X5, Atom X7: tablet chips for Humanoid, Windows

For Intel's new "Cherry-red Trail" Atom chips, potential customers include a WHO's World Health Organization of industry heavyweights: Asus, Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba, with the guiding light elision of Samsung.

dellvenue8 7000realsense taperule — Intel's RealSense cameras can provide nifty effects like real-world distance measurements.

But here, too, Intel said that customers should focus on performance, rather than power. Josh Newman, the general manager of tablets and 2-in-1 devices for Intel, said that the the new Cherry Hang back chips should take up "significant improvement in graphics, gen[eration] on gen[eration], with some of the significant exploiter experiences that I talked about." Meanwhile, Cardinal Newman said, world power consumption will be roughly equivalent to antecedent-coevals Embayment Trail chips. That's somewhat surprising, given that the Bay Trail parts were fabricated at 22-nm, and the Red Trail Atom X5 and X7 are 14-nm chips.

Newman's "user experiences," however, include the RealSense depth cameras that Intel began talking about subterminal year, where the CPU is used for fun effects such as "refocusing" the photographic camera after the blastoff and calculating the length of objects in the scene. Intel's TrueKey security and In favou WiDi technologies could also come along.

Hardware makers that buy Intel's parts could also design 3G tablets. Intel will show off asunder LTE/Bluetooth/WLAN radios, known as its Actinium 8X70, conjointly with its GNSSS 2×00 GPS micro chip and NFC 4000 NFC controller.

Quieten, the new Atoms represent a notable accomplishment for Intel, which hasn't successful a viable run at the smartphone grocery since 1999's StrongARM central processor. Will IT be able to exploit the niche? Time will tell.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/432082/intel-announces-atom-x3-sofia-chip-new-cherry-trail-atoms-for-tablets.html

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