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Intel Bay Trail Brings New Architecture and Performance To Atom
Vigile writes "Today at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, the company officially released the Atom Z3000 series of SoCs (Bay Trail) based on the Silvermont architecture. Unlike previous Atom designs, the Z3000 and Silvermont is a completely re-architected product from the ground up and is no longer based on legacy processors. Changes include a move to an out-of-order x86 architecture with drastically improved single threaded performance but the removal of Intel's HyperThreading technology. Dual-core modules with 1MB of shared cache can be paired up to create a quad-core SoC that also includes upgraded graphics design. Intel is no longer depending on PowerVR for a GPU and has integrated a 4 EU (execution unit) Intel HD Graphics design that is very similar to the one used in Ivy Bridge. As a result, as tested at PC Perspective in both Windows 8.1 and Android 4.2.2, the Bay Trail part is as much as 4x faster in single threaded tasks and 3.5x faster in gaming and graphics. Power consumption remains nearly the same as it did with Clover Trail (Atom Z2760) but with improved power gating and support for Connected Standby, Intel's new Atom looks and feels completely different than any before it."
MojoKid notes that Intel also announced an "open" SoC architecture (where open involves you giving Intel tons of money).
But how does it compare to the AMD Bobcats and Jaguars? To me THAT is the question. I have built many a system around the Bobcat and its pretty damned nice, more than powerful enough to replace the aging P4s in office environments while taking less power under load for the entire system than your average P4 idles at, great for netbooks, even low power servers, and the Jaguars are powerful enough that they are the chip of the Xbox N and PS4 while supposedly using little more than the Bobcats.
Every system with an Atom chip that has came into the shop...sigh...the words "mediocre" and "weak" instantly come to mind. AMD was able to boost their Bobcat by pairing it with a powerful GCN GPU and splitting the load, but lets face it Intel has never been great at GPU design so you ended up with a weak sauce CPU tied to a weak sauce GPU and that equals just painful to use.
So while I'll be happy to give 'em a spin if any ever walk through my door unless someone can show me some real world tests, NOT benchmarks because as we have seen the "Intel Cripple Compiler" makes any benchmark that doesn't announce which compiler they use suspect at best, I'll have to tell my customers to avoid Atoms, if they want Intel the i3s are ULV and at least have good performance.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
According to Intel this is a complete redesign that has more in common with haswell than it does with older atoms. It's interesting to note that all Intel chips, pre haswell, have had bolt-on powersaving tech. Haswell and later chips are designed from the ground up with power management in mind.
The family has chips aimed at true mobile applications, like tablets and smartphones. It also has chips aimed at low end laptops and deskops, like the previous atom. I don't know how well they will compete with bobcat and Jaguar, and I'm not sure they're intended to compete in the same space. I think the Pentium line is what's meant to compete with those.
On paper it looks good. Out of order execution, super low power states, power state awareness between GPU and CPU, 64bit support, 2 or 4 cores. I'm eager to see benches and reviews of new hardware once it becomes generally available.