Intel has launched a range of Braswell SoCs which will become members of the Pentium and Celeron families. The new chips are manufactured using Intel's 14nm process and are destined for entry-level laptops and desktops. These Airmont CPU based processors, using a die-shrunk Silvermont architecture, are the mobile Celeron N3000, N3050, N3150, and Pentium N3700 chips. The last three of these chips will also be made in versions for desktop systems.
In the specifications and price chart, reproduced below and based upon the one at CPU World, it's easy to grasp the comparative specs of the new low power consumption Braswell SoCs. In additional details, not covered by the chart, CPU World reports that the Airmont cores have SIMD instructions enabled up to SSE4, and they support virtualization and Burst Performance technologies. The Generation 8 LP architecture GPU on board has up to 16 execution units and runs at up to 700MHz boost speed.
|
Model |
Cores / |
Frequency / |
L2 |
Gen 8-LP |
Memory |
TDP |
Price |
|
Celeron N3000 |
2 / 2 |
1.04 / 2.08 GHz |
1 MB |
320MHz / 600MHz |
DDR3-1600 |
4W |
$107 |
|
Celeron N3050 |
2 / 2 |
1.6 / 2.16 GHz |
1 MB |
320MHz / 600MHz |
DDR3-1600 |
6W |
$107 |
|
Celeron N3150 |
4 / 4 |
1.6 / 2.08 GHz |
2 MB |
320MHz / 640MHz |
DDR3-1600 |
6W |
$107 |
|
Pentium N3700 |
4 / 4 |
1.6 / 2.4 GHz |
2 MB |
400MHz / 700MHz |
DDR3-1600 |
6W |
$161 |
Interestingly the pricing of all the Celeron chips is set exactly the same, at $107, yet the Celeron N3150 with its four cores should offer noticeably more pep and vigor to its dual-core brethren. The pricing too, seems a bit high for chips destined for budget level laptops, Chromebooks and PCs. With Chromebooks, for example, we know that the price is about to dive to new lows - thanks to the use of Rockchip SoCs.
The first product we have been tipped off as using one of the above Braswell processors is the ECS LIVA mini-PC, the range will also include Core M processor options, as seen at CeBIT.
