Intel Remains Committed to the Atom Brand by VR-Zone.com



DigiTimes today ran a story about Intel's plans to rename the Atom brand under the upcoming Cedar Trail platform in 2012, due to poor brand image of Atom CPUs. We contacted an Intel spokesperson who responded by saying that there are no plans to change the Atom brand and that they are on track to launch new Atom processors in Q4 and more next year.

Currently under the Atom brand, there are currently 5 processors series; D, N, Z, E and CE where D is for performance segment, N and E is for mainstream, Z is for Battery Optimized and CE is for Consumer Electronics.

VR-Zone had an opportunity to talk to Brian Fravel, Intel’s Director of Marketing for Brand Strategy and Management who oversees the Atom brand. He confirmed that Intel remains extremely committed to the Atom brand and will continue to do so for 2012 and beyond.

According to Fravel, Atom is doing well in segments such as Smart TVs where Intel Atom CE 4100 (Sodaville) chips are powering Google TV and Sony Internet TV. In the mobility space, Atom will continue to make in-roads into the netbook/entry level desktop space with 32nm Cedar Trail which is expected to launch in Q4 this year. Tablet/smartphones with 32nm Medfield SoC are slated for a H1 2012 release, and a tablet/hybrid 32nm Clover Trail succeeding Oak Trail sometime next year.


The recent public demonstrations of their Atom solutions over at Intel Developer Forum and Microsoft BUILD conference also clearly showed Intel is fully behind their Atom chips. At IDF, Intel has showed a Medfield powered smartphone and at BUILD, Microsoft has showed a tablet powered by a 32nm Atom chip which we believe is a Medfield. According to our sources, Medfield is a single-core chip supporting HyperThreading and Clover Trail is essentially a SoC version of Cedar Trail which is dual-core chip supporting HyperThreading.