Intel Details New Atom N570 Processor

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Intel on Tuesday provided further details about its Atom N570 chip and said netbooks with the processor will ship later this month.

The dual-core processor runs at 1.66GHz and includes 1MB of L2 cache. It draws 8.5 watts of power and supports DDR3 memory, Intel said in a blog entry.

Asustek Computer, Samsung and Lenovo will ship netbooks with the Atom N570 processor later this month, Intel said. Some laptops are being shown at the CeBit trade show going on in Hanover, Germany.

Netbooks running on the chip will deliver a battery life similar to that of systems running on single-core Atom processors, Intel said. The battery life of netbooks depends on features, screen size and applications. Some netbooks can deliver between eight and 12 hours of battery life on basic activities such as Web browsing. But applications that demand a lot of processing power, such as high-definition graphics, can drain battery life quickly.

The chip was first announced on Monday with SeaMicro's SM10000-64 low-power server, which includes 256 Atom N570 processors. The chip includes server-friendly features such as 64-bit extensions and multithreading, in which each core is capable of running two threads simultaneously to boost application performance. All desktop, laptop and server chips based on Intel's newer Sandy Bridge microarchitecture and its predecessor, Westmere, are capable of running multiple threads per core.

There is a growing interest in using netbook chips such as Atom in low-power servers. However, netbook shipments are getting clobbered by tablets, which are competing for consumer dollars. Intel is also working on an Atom chip for tablets, which is code-named Oak Trail.

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