Intel Announces Clover Trail+ Atom Platform For Smartphones and Tablets
MojoKid writes "Today, Intel announced the follow-on to their Medfield Atom platform for smartphones, code-named Clover Trail+. Clover Trail is powering a few Windows 8 Pro tablets currently. However, Clover Trail+, Intel's new performance and feature-optimized version of Clover Trail for smartphones and tablets, has a long row to hoe versus incumbents like Qualcomm, Samsung and NVIDIA, at least in the highly competitive handset arena. What's interesting this time around is that Clover Trail+ seems to really have the chops (at least on paper) to keep pace with the performance of current, best-of-class ARM-based architectures that have been so dominant in smartphones. Clover Trail+ is another 32nm design and Intel has beefed up almost every major functional block on the platform. From its now dual-core, 4-thread capable Atom CPU, to its new PowerVR SGX 544MP2 graphics engine, 2GB of LPDDR2 1066 DRAM, up to 256GB of NAND storage, a higher resolution 16MP camera and Intel's XMM 6360 HSPA+ 42Mbps modem, with LTE support from their XMM 7160 radio moving forward; Intel's Clover Trail+ smartphone reference design brings a lot more to the table than Medfield ever did."
Myth 1: Intel can't make x86 power/performance competitive with ARM: Being busted as we speak.
Myth 2: ARM can't scale up performance: Beginning to be busted with the A15, more to come with the 64-bit chips.
Myth 3: ARM can just press a button and get Intel level performance without using any extra power: Busted wide open by ARM themselves with the whole "littleBIG/BIG/little/etc" approach and by the conspicuous lack of high-end A15 chips in smartphones (note Tablet != Smartphone, and look at the Cortex-A9 based Tegra4i for the latest example of manufacturers not putting high-clocked A15s in smartphones).
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