Intel will use Silvermont cores to power upcoming versions of chips, not just under the Atom brand but also under the Celeron and Pentium brands, reports Anandtech. How this will change the budget computing landscape is not known but multitasking performance could be better at the cheap end with Silvermont’s 4 cores on the job.
The first Silvermont SKU we know about was revealed thanks to a PDF of presentation slides from Intel’s Hermann Eul, head of the mobile & communications group (slide 28 in particular, the smallprint below the gaming performance graph).
The above slide compared the performance, especially focussed on graphics, of the following two systems:
- Intel Clover Trail - ASUS VivoTab: Intel® Atom™ Z2760 2C4T Saltwell 1.8 GHz Windows 8 2GB Ram 64 GB EMMC Intel GMA
- Intel Bay Trail - T Z3770 (2W SDP): Silvermont 4C4T 2.4 GHz Windows 8 64big LPDDR3-1066 22nm GEN 7
“Comparisons are at different display resolutions (device native resolutions), results may vary if compared at same display resolution”
As you can see, the first named Silvermont processor is the Z3770 sporting 4 cores and 4 threads (4C4T) and running at 2.4GHz. The new SKU has a 2W SDP (Scenario Design Power) rating. Anandtech notes that this is similar to some previous Intel Atom chips’ TDP figures. Also Silvermont will come with “a wider dynamic range of power consumption”, indeed Intel says the new microarchitecture will offer “~3x more peak performance or ~5x lower power”.
The new Silvermont processor detailed above, the Z3770 isn’t named as an Atom, Celeron or Pentium. It’s going to be very interesting to see how the new ranges of chips pan out in naming and performance to make up Intel’s portfolio.
